Holy Moly

David can count to seven. Holy moly. Yesterday he could do to six. He just woke up that way, counting flowers on a tortilla warmer. The day before he was counting bits of cranberry sauce on his plate, up to four. Holy moly. Where did he learn that?

Another man in a wig? and other news

Did you hear? The U.S. Mint has given up on the golden Sacagawea dollars first released in 2000. They haven't given up on the concept of a dollar coin, however. Instead, they're hoping that in 2007 we'll happily use their new dollar coins, decorated with pictures of dead presidents on them. Give me a break!

Nothing against the presidents, but every other piece of U.S. currency already has a picture of a dead old man on it. The Sacagawea dollar, on the other hand, was special. It had a picture of the ultimate American supermom, a goodwill ambassador who spoke multiple languages and helped guide a caravan of nervous and awestruck men through unfamiliar territory, all while raising a little boy. The coin is the most beautiful and elegant piece of American currency I've even jingled in my pocket. And the image of mother and child is a heckuva lot more inspiring than a picture of (yet another) man in a wig. (Image courtesy Wikipedia.) And in other news . . . we've mostly, but only mostly, settled in at the new place. All of my books and papers are still in boxes, but the den, kitchen, bedrooms, and bathrooms are in order. In addition to finishing out the living room, we've still got a long list of repairs, tweaks, and tightenings, so we think we know how we'll be spending the upcoming holiday weekends. C&D don't allow a lot of time for that kind of thing, however, preferring long stroller rides to the playgahround and visiting with all of our friendly new neighbors. This new state of chaos allows even less time for posting than I had hoped, but I'm hoping that if we can all sit tight, we'll be back on track by the end of the year.

Why Why Why?

The hardest part about moving has been explaining to people that I am perfectly aware I am moving my little toddler-children into a two-bedroom house with no yard and smack dab in the jumbled-up zoning-free center of the fourth largest city in the U.S.

Yes, two bedrooms. By modern housing standards, they are small; the master bedroom is 14'x17' and the second bedroom is about 10'x12'. If we really need to find more space we could always convert the garage, but that's not likely. What small bedrooms mean is that we can't buy large furniture or hoard a decade's worth of clothing in our closets. When we tell each other good night we won't have to yell from one wing of the house to the other. Isn't all that a good thing? Anyway, is a master suite, children's suite, and gameroom/loft the size of Belgium actually necessary? In fact, should we even pretend that the spacious McMansion of American dreams is a mainstream expectation when a significant fraction of this city's population will go to bed hungry tonight, with siblings, parents, and grandparents crammed into a dark one- or two-bedroom apartment? And are Carmen and David better off if they grow up assuming that they must have those American essentials--bedroom, television, bathroom--of their very own when one of the most common complaints of the 21st-century modern society is the family that has grown distant despite living under the same roof?

The other benefits of the neighborhood outweigh the fact that we'll have to share bathrooms and not all have bedrooms to entertain friends. (Instead, there's the living room with 18' of floor-to-ceiling windows, a breezy balcony, or funky private patio screaming for strings of Christmas lights and a DJ.) We'll be able to walk places, like school, the library, the grocery store. We'll have a diversity of friends and learning resources at our fingertips.

And parks. Lots of parks. When they are through worrying about the bedrooms, people worry about the fact that I have no yard at the new place. But I can't hide my delight. A 1/4 acre plot of St. Augustine grass is one of the most boring, understimulating, all-around awful constructions of the 20th century. "But where," people ask, "will the babies play?" Let me put it in writing that the neighborhood kids on Carvel, where we are moving from, rarely play in their backyards. Instead, they play on the street, making my car the end zone. Or they beg their parents to take them to the park, where they don't have to worry about kicking balls over fences, or breaking windows with softballs that weren't, after all, so soft. So what's the big deal about all that fenced-in grass, anyway? So when C&D need to climb and holler like monkeys, or run and dance like colts, we can walk to a park and meet some new monkey-friends, or drive out to the country where we can run past the pastures and sink our hands in the loose dirt the chickens scratched for us.

Underneath these arguments is a deeper sense of reasoning that I don't discuss much because some things are just too hard to talk about in polite company. But it's this: We're really doing an experiement, I guess, trying to live city-style in a so-called city that's really one big suburb. Call, it, maybe, "city lite." By walking more and driving less, relying on public spaces like parks rather than our own private ones, and living closer to several sources for local, organic, and/or sustainably-grown food, we'll be better able to live more consciously, and show C&D that there is a better way than living in Houston's newest housing development, shopping according to the advertisements at the Super-Duper MegaMart and spending a significant part of their lifespan on the freeway while their buttocks mold to the seat of the minivan. The new place will rely 100% on wind power for a source of energy, and some minor modifications should easily make the new house more energy-efficient. We hope that C&D will learn that by buying an existing house with no yard, we are preserving, someplace, 1/4 acre of parkland or pasture or Big Thicket forest or rich loamy cropland above a Brazos river bottom. We hope that when C&D look back at growing up in the funky grey house they'll proudly consider themselves a kind of urban pioneer, settling in the city to avoid the exurban landscape of concrete and TruGreen Chemlawns, and doing our part in the day-to-day to ultimately create more of what we really want: cleaner air, greener spaces, wilder places.

To David and Carmen

Good Morning!!! "precious babies!!" I was thinking
about you this morning in music class with Dad and
Mommy with the movers. I was thinking about the
"Hokey Pokey" dance we learned on Saturday with me.
You learned it so well, you could probably show your
music teacher how to do the "Hokey Pokey". It was so
much fun being with you over the weekend; the singing,
the dancing, the reading, and the lunch, and picking
up toys so "we can eat" and "nack time" were all fun.
And before Grandpa and I left, we did one last "Hokey
Pokey" dance and then as we were leaving, David, you
made us laugh when you said to Grandpa, "Bye Pokey".

In fact, we laughed and played all the time. Grandpa
worked so hard on painting the new house, we wanted it
to be pretty.
I was thinking about your nap time today in the "new
house". Hope it went well.

Keep dancing and laughing.

Love you mucho,
Grama

Moving Day

Tomorrow we move to the new house, newly painted and cleaned by my parents, and then babyproofed and carpeted my Matt (the floors are mostly quarry tile, painted concrete, and pine). And I got to play general contractor while my mom took a turn at baby-wrangling.

I'm going to miss our little house, the house that we bought because it was cheaper than rent and halfway between Sugar Land and Rice. I'm going to miss our neighbors, our breezy screened porch, and the sound of the wind blowing through the trees in our shady backyard. I'm going to miss my happy little spots of ruellia and Gulf Coast muhly, now cotton-candy pink, and my azaleas, and the little bluestem that rustled when the wind blew. I'm going to miss my red maple, the one that dropped its leaves at all the wrong times, and the American Holly that we bought at Teas Nursery last Christmas. I'm going to miss the massive (does Matt do anything small?) bird feeder that Matt built and placed outside my window so I could watch the birds (but mostly squirrels) while I studied, and the blue dining room that grown-ups hated but kids loved. I'm going to miss the hardwood floors Matt and I refinished ourselves, although I won't miss the squeaks.

With a slide and a bouncy layer of rubber mulch in the patio, a fresh coat of pretty green paint (Aloe Essence, the card said), and some friendly new rugs, the new place is already feeling like ours.

But I'm still a little bit sad. That's okay, I think.

---

Even though we've been so busy, C&D have had plenty of time to make us all laugh, laugh, laugh. Maybe if I work hard I can get some pictures and videos posted soon. They are the Cutest Babies in the World. (Say what you want about toddlers or kids, but C&D are babies. In fact, they'll be my babies until forever, maybe longer.)

DSL will go down later tonight; we should be back online by Tuesday or Wednesday, when I've found a place to put the 'puter and keyboard.

Distracted?

Packing, Big Thicket annual meeting tomorrow (Cong. Brady showing up, and lots of other people, besides), C&D have both battled colds and the resultant sleepless nights, I strained my back, and this week visited every store in the Galleria area to find the Perfect Shirt to wear with my Perfect suit. Oh, and, right, I had to buy shoes. (I didn't want to visit every store in the Gallera area to do this. I hate buying shoes. So instead of dealing with the usual shoe-shoe foo-foo, I drove to one store off Post Oak, explained what I needed, and just handed over my credit card. At least that one thing was relatively easy.)

So, with so much to do, I am probably a little distracted. It maybe shouldn't be suprising, then, for you to find out that today after finally finding the Perfect Shirt (and Perfect Choker and Perfect Earrings) I inhaled dinner and for dessert ate an entire Chinese fortune cookie. Yes, the entire cookie. I ate my fortune. Sometime mid-chew I realized that there was something, ah, particular in my mouth, and extracted a piece of partially-dissolved, entirely masticated paper. I tried to retrieve my fortune, but, alas, it was long gone.

So now I have to go back to Shanghai Joe's and get another cookie. Fine by me. I like fortune cookies, and I like Shanghai Joe's. And, anyway, the sushi chef said she missed the babies and wanted to see them. I'll pick up another cookie when we swing by, maybe as soon as next week.

So tomorrow we present to the community the report that I edited, and I also get to do my quarterly treasurerly things. Since C&D don't know how to attend a day-long meeting, they are staying home with Matt (who does know how to attend a day-long meeting; don''t want to imply he doesn't). Tomorrow night we'll all kick our shoes off, collapse in a heap, and swap stories.

Great pictures lately. I'll post them when I can.

A Mess by Any Other Name . . .

is not the same. Today, right before bed, David opened the hall closet and pulled out an old tube of Christmas wrapping paper. He unrolled it and the house quickly filled with the loud crinkle of paper while I cleaned up the last remnants of dinner. Within a few minutes I found C&D walking over the paper, by this time unrolled like a red carpet through the entire length of the kitchen. Crackle, crackle, four feet marched up and down on the paper. Carmen was saying something as she marched . . . and I eventually made it out to be "oh-de-brish," or, in English, "over the bridge." She was marching on a paper bridge. I didn't have the heart, especially after hearing that, to put the paper away so I left it out a little while longer.

Can't Resist

I'm supposed to be busy. I'm supposed to be listing the rest of my things on eBay, and checking on my Craigslist responses for the things I have posted there to sell. But I had to post here, first.

Yesterday someone came to pick up our deep freeze. You don't need a deep freeze when you take your babies to Whole Foods two-plus times per week because they like going there as much as the park. And if somebody cooed and oohed and gave you free cookies and fruit and juice everytime you went to the grocery store, wouldn't you be there just as often?

Carmen and David watched as our new friend backed his truck up to the garage, loaded the freezer, and then waved goodbye. Except that David didn't just wave goodbye,
he did this:
and this:
and this:

That's my boy!

Matt says that he does this all the time. I guess I've never noticed, because I'm generally on the other side of the door. Now I know why I have to clean that glass so often. I thought I was just cleaning handprints. But maybe now instead of cleaning it twice a week, I should clean it twice per day?

I also wonder who else has received such a lovely adieu. Perhaps I should attach a sign to the door, along with the "Shhh, knock quietly" sign. It would read something like, "We do not assume liability for any mistakes, misstatements, falsehood, or squashed, drooly faces in the statements, opinions, representations, and anything else from the little people in this house. Anything they say or do, especially if it is embarrassing, but not necessarily if it is brilliant, is neither endorsed by this family nor does it necessarily reflect our beliefs. Especially the embarrassing parts."

Power to the People (In Charge)

I really like how now the American public can rely on the good ol' television set to teach their children everything they need to know. Now, in addition to the squeaky CTW franchises and the sugar-coated cartoons on Nickelodeon, we have a channel specifically geared to babies called BabyFirstTV. With 24/7 programming that changes every five minutes (yes, I said five minutes) that addresses everything from baby signs to counting to art, we can just place our progeny in front of the television set and watch those little geniuses get smarter by the minute. With an automatic breastmilk machine (because, after all, breastfed babies are smarter babies), we'd have a real Boob Tube! Let the baby "soothe itself" (i.e., cry its lungs out) to sleep and we needn't worry about the baby at all!

C&D probably watch three hours of television every week, on average, usually while I am trying to prepare dinner. I think it is too much. There is a wall between the kitchen and living room, however, so it's hard to watch them from the kitchen, and it's hard for them to resist wanting to be where they can see me (or be underfoot). I'm hoping that after moving into a house with an open floor plan I'll be able to cook a little more without relying on the DVD player. (Rachel, I will be in debt to you forever.) Regardless, setting Baby in front of a television is now almost a necessity, born out of our social and cultural givens: Mommy at home (alone) with baby, cooking dinner (alone) in her kitchen, (alone) in her suburban house, on a quiet (and lonely) suburban street. There is no safe place for baby to toddle off to, and no one to watch the baby, so we look for the remote and turn the television on, if it isn't already.

With pressures on mother and baby to be smarter, sweeter, and more savvy than ever before, it's no wonder that DirecTV is offering BabyFirstTV. But an infant-centered television channel reminds me just a little bit of 1984 (the book, not the year). I'm sure any similarities are lost on BabyFirstTV's target audience, but let's think about this. We're taking our most vulnerable minds and exposing them to messaging designed by individuals more concerned with serving themselves than each other: business people (oh, right, and the "education specialists" paid by those business people). In other words, our children are learning precisely the messages that someone thought would ultimately yield the most profit . . . and power. Hmm. Funny circumstance that to turn on the television, you press the button labeled "Power"?

I Hear

Fiona, this one's for you:

Tonight, as Carmen snuggled up next to me and tried to fall asleep, she told herself one of her favorite stories. It's called I Hear; it's a board book and not much of a story book, but she likes it very much anyway. The night went like this:
Snuggle, roll, flip, flop, kick.
"Iiiiiii heeeeaaaaar . . . birt. Twee, twee, twee."
Kick, kick.
"Iiiiiii heeeeaaaaar . . . gog. Ruff, ruff, ruff!"
Kick, kick, asleep.

---

I have been working on a post for several days, but keep running out of time to finish it. The usual story, I guess.

---

I MUST be sleeping (that's a usual story too, isn't it?), but here's a couple tidbits for the grandmas:

1) A couple of weeks ago, Carmen invented a game called "I'm Asleep." David started playing the game a few days later. It goes like this: Baby puts head down on couch, bed, or other soft, cushy space. Baby is often tired, and is using this opportunity to rest a bit, but doesn't want yet to succomb to sleep. Baby signs sleep and says, "I sleep. Shhhhhh." Baby puts finger over lips and then pretends to sleep (usually eyes stay open, though). And then I nod my head and quietly put my own finger to my lips. Shhhh. Then the baby sits up quickly, signs awake, and says, "I wake!" To play this game properly, repeat sequence at least 29 times, and always remember to think it's funny.

2) Today was the second day of music class, which C&D like very very very much. Carmen sits in my lap and says and signs "More sing!" whenever the group stops singing. David walks around and flirts with everyone sitting in the circle, smiling and nodding and running back to me when they get too close. Seeing all the other children, mostly aged two through four, is the absolute highlight of their week. Today, just before I loaded C&D into the car, I told them we were going to school. C&D know the signs for school and pay attention, and usually follow up saying and signing school with signing "paytenshun!" Anyway, after hearing "school" they ran to the front door, reaching to the handle to get out to the car. When I buckled Carmen into her seat, though, she started to cry. "Potty." Oh, oh. So I took her back in. "Gool," she said, and I pulled up her pants and took her back out. "Potty," she said as soon as she sat in her carseat. Oh, man. Pants down. "Nooooooo! Gooooool!" Okay. Pants up. Back in car. "Potty!" Breathe. David started to whimper. "Potty." Oh, no. So I brought them back inside. They cried, of course, because they wanted to go to school. So I made a mental note to bring some extra diaper wipes, just in case, and marched out. I began to wonder how many years I had before me of being late due to potty problems ("are you sure you don't have to go?"). Then I figured that once they understood their bladders, they'd be at the perfect age for losing things, like backpacks, glasses, shoes, homework, and permission slips for the day's field trip. I realize now how much fortitude my mother really did have, gathering me and my brother to drive across town in stop-and-go rush-hour traffic to the good schools, our eyes sleepy and our stomachs nervous because yes, once again, we were running late. I decided next week we would aim to leave at eight o'clock for our nine o'clock class, just in case. We did eventually make it there only 30 minutes late, just in time for a handful of songs and the opportunity to tell everyone not only hello, but goodbye. And C&D were very happy to see their potties when we got home.

What DO I say?

Life BB (Before Babies) was in a lot of ways very different.

For instance, we could leave the house on a moment's notice. We could stay up past bedtime on a school night (well, I could, Matt couldn't). We didn't need to plan our day around an afternoon nap. We didn't need to restrict eating out to outdoor restaurants with concrete floors.

Now, it takes us a little longer to get out the door. Sometimes we never even make it. The house is dark (except for the computer monitor) by eight o'clock. The house is quiet every afternoon for Baby Siesta. And right now I'm craving squid, saag paneer, and an assortment of other foods not available at the local kidproof eateries.

The hardest thing, however, is this: BB, I was recognized as an an expert in my professional field, and in my personal life. People assumed I knew what I was doing. Now, as I mosey around town with my two little people, I am suddenly in dire need of advice. C&D need cribs, spankings, and American cheese. I need to participate in lots of MNO's (Mothers' Night Out, for the uninitiated) and put on a little makeup for my husband. I listen politely, then smile and nod, and my acting skills improve daily.

The other part of the baby routine is Mommy Talk. You know, the kind of talk that strangers do when they are looking for polite conversation, and rather than ask about work, politics, or the weather, they ask about poop, sleep, and Gerber carrots. Sometimes the conversations go like this:
How are they sleeping?
David still wakes up at night.
Do they sleep in the same crib?
No, actually, one sleeps with me in one room and the other with my husband. Everybody gets more sleep that way.
Oh, well, at least they're not in your bed!
Heh, heh . . .

And then today, it wound up like this:
I put my baby's bedroom as far from my bedroom as possible. I don't want to have to hear her when she wakes up.
I looked at the baby, who was dangling bored and uncomfortable from a baby swing while her mother talked and gave the swing an occasional push. The woman hadn't given me advice, but her easy confidence suggested that she expected I would agree with and even appreciate her nifty nighttime trick. No way would Baby's cries and whimpers interfere with Mommy's busy schedule. I smiled and nodded in a neighborly way, then changed the subject. Thinking about the conversation later, I wondered why some people think it's right to demand convenience--and compliance--from a person who can't even yet talk in a full sentence. I also wondered why I didn't say anything in response. Somehow, it's okay for someone to proudly admit--to a stranger, no less--to ignoring their baby, but I could only just smile and nod, afraid of inviting any criticism if I dared to disagree.

Would I say anything next time? Probably not. Walking through big-box baby retailers and looking at the wide assortment of baby bouncers, cribs, playpens, baby monitors, sleep-through-the-night books, and Baby Einstein videos suggests that the Ideal Child is a convenient child, and the Ideal Mother makes sure her child is convenient. I already feel like I'm swimming upstream and against the current; why swim even harder? I'm too tired as it is.

At the same time, I don't self-sacrificially throw myself on the ground and let C&D walk all over me (and not just because Carmen likes to stand and bounce on my bladder). The other Mommy talk I hear too often is:
Don't forget to make time for yourself.
Yes, I want to say, and you are currently infringing on it. But really, since you haven't even bothered to ask me, what do you think I do all week? Play Pat-a-Cake and dolls? Why do people assume that I now include "parent" in the list of Things I Am, my life has become slow and in need of stimulation? Do I LOOK boring? Or do you think my life is brimful of nervewracking baby-induced chaos and I need to run out of my house screaming every Thursday for Happy Hour? If I wore the socialist feminist book that I read last week on my head, would you not tell me to make time for myself? Hey, look, it's 12am, I'm making time for myself! In fact, if you weren't so low on my list of priorities, I could provide you with a portfolio of all of the paid work, volunteer projects, and personal projects I've undertaken since January 2005. But it's going to take me a while because I'm busy with other, more important, things, so let me pencil it into my calendar and tell you to expect to see it, oh, gee, never? And, lastly, if you're confused because I have to adhere to the Baby Clock, won't on a whim go out to lunch at 2 o'clock, get my nails done on a Saturday (ew, sorry, that wasn't my thing even BB), or stay out late with you on a random weekday, well, I don't know what to say, really.

What DO I say?

I did have a camera for:

I did have a camera yesterday when two of the neighborhood kids dug through my recycle bins and fashioned themselves armor in order to battle with each other, and also fight against a younger sibling's 3-foot long plastic alligator. After I made peace with the fact that they were digging through my trash, my mom (here this week), Matt, and I all laughed and laughed as we watched them from our front windows. This was even funnier than the time they tried to plant an egg in my grass. David stood at the living room window, watching with what seemed to have been absolute adoration. "Hat," we would occassionally say and sign to us, and then go back to watching them swing at each other with sticks.

Then this morning, after a trip to the dry cleaner's, David fell asleep in the car. That's not a cigar, it's a pretzel rod. At least the pretzel rod was easier to extract than the slimy half-chewed mango slices he often falls asleep with.

Wish I Had a Camera

Had two back-to-back showings for the house this evening. The first was during dinner, when we took the babes to the Galleria. Carmen called it the "'ria." There isn't a word she doesn't try to say. Having her around is like having a pet parrot.

We had already been to the Galleria this morning, but they didn't mind going again. This morning the cosmetics counter staff at Neiman Marcus gave Carmen her own little NM bag with a sample of Guerlain's new fragrance, Insolence. "Girl!" Carmen said and signed when she looked at the folded card holding the eau de toilete, and then proceeded to play with the card and perfume for the next several minutes. The staff twirled Carmen's hair and wiped David's nose with a Bobbi Brown tissue when he cried (because Carmen cried, and she cried because she wanted to walk around and touch everything on the display shelves). I couldn't believe it. I have walked through Neiman Marcus (usually on the way to and from getting my hair cut) at least 300 times and I have never been presented with a sample of perfume, and I have maybe been spritzed only once. Ever.

We spent the first part of this evening playing and then eating dinner in the Macy's wing. No samples from Macy's, although we did have a delicious dinner, and Carmen got to show Matt that she knows how to say and sign octupus and fire truck (sign and say firefighter, say truck, and then most importantly, wail like a siren).

David has been feeling like a Velcro-baby lately, always wanting to be stuck to Mama unless we're out of the house and he's too distracted to miss me very much. He had no symptoms of Velcro-ness at all this evening during the second showing of the house, when he climbed the ten-foot big-kid swirly slide at the school playground and slid back down, fast and slippery like the Olympic luge. I wished I had a camera to capture that ear-to-ear, blissfully happy smile. I'll have to make sure he can slide again.

Carmen was partner-dancing with my mother this afternoon and David can do all the movements to Itsy Bitsy Spider. It's time to start pushing our Wee Folklorico project along. We talk to someone this month.

Memory Card is Full

The memory card is full. Time to post some pictures while I achive and store some of the more memorable moments lately. Today's memorable moment? David lifting his shirt and adhering bee stickers to his little tummy-tum-tum, fixing his shirt back down, and then lifting it again to apply more stickers. Funny little kid.

Sorry so many of these pictures are blurry. I either need a faster camera, or slower babies.

Playing at the school the day after a rain, a few weeks ago:

I forget that C&D can reach just about anything on the kitchen table or counter, now. I had cherry babies, cherry walls, and a cherry Learning Tower in the time it took to go to the car and bring in two bags of groceries. That would have been, what, 30 seconds, maybe?

David wearing some of his favorite bling. He wears it proudly whenever he comes across it in his toy basket.

Playing in the dirt at the George Ranch. The chickens keep it nice and loose.

Carmen at the George Ranch, wearing one of the few hats she'll wear without complaining.

Playing in my Dad's F-150:


Playing with the clown noses we got from the library for reading our books. The trick is to squeeze the nose and say, "Honk!"

One of the reasons why the glider is now in the bedroom:



The reason God invented daddies:



Just a little dizzy:



David's turn:



Keys!



Playing in my dad's truck:

Pway-growd

Two pictures from the place Carmen calls the "pwaygrowd."

Packing Story

Matt, boxing things up: "This is the house where we really figured out who we are. We went from building an entertainment center [that could hold a 27" TV] to trying to get rid of it [who needs TV?]."

Matt thinks the entertainment center would make a terrific wardrobe.

Dear Babies

Dear Babies,

Today we gave the realtor a big fat check to serve as earnest money on a new house. Your new house will have one fewer bedroom (2) than this current house, and no yard to speak of. This, by American standards, is a Very Uncommon Thing to do. In fact, some people might think we are outright crazy.

So, in order to better articulate why we are moving to such a house while also explaining to our family and friends that we really think we aren't crazy (mostly), your dad wrote a white paper. This is the way it goes:

Matt's White Paper

Whenever Microsoft does something that they thing is really brilliant, but everyone else thinks is less bright, they issue a “White Paper” to try to explain why they did what they did (as if they use a different color paper for everything else)

So consider this a white paper on why we are thinking of living in a house that’s built like a cruise ship.

Why Change?

Right now, we have the perfect setup for babies. A big, cooled screen porch that they can spill water all over. A nice cheap house with nice neighbors. And for everyone’s current age, we can’t do much better.

But they’re becoming more social, and our little corner of the city is becoming kind of small for the babies. Almost every day they want to go for a ride in the car – to the store, to a park with better playground equipment, more playmates, and less mosquitoes than our fenced backyard, to a music class, to feed the ducks. In our little corner of the neighborhood, most people are really happy to have just enough financial resources to have a little apartment or little house, and there’s not enough additional money flowing around to support amenities in the way of classes, nice parks, preschool, and even nicer grocery stores.

All of these things are back in town, and so looking forward, we see ourselves doing lots and lots and lots of driving. And with the odds of Joyce finding work outside of the central city pretty low, she’ll be driving into town to work, too.

So we figure, let’s move into town. Seems simple so far.

And off to School We Go

As in the rest of this country, segregation is alive and well in Houston, perhaps more so than it was before Martin Luther King, Jr. There are four neighborhood elementary schools in the central city that have good reputations, high test scores, few discipline problems, etc. Three of them, however, cheat. They draw their school boundaries so that they include only neighborhoods where deed restrictions allow only single family homes – no apartments, no townhomes, no condos. With the price of land in the city near $300,000 for a quarter acre, this means that the average house price for these schools is in the range of $550,000. The average house price in the entire city, not counting apartments, is well below $200,000.

The school that the C&D attend will go a long way towards shaping what they see is “normal”. If all of their friends get taken to school by the live-in nanny and picked up by mom in her Jaguar, then that will seem normal. But we’d like them to have a broader perspective on the world than what they see at the high-end section of the Galleria.

The fourth neighborhood school is in a more urban neighborhood, but it draws from a true cross-section of the city. Multi-million dollar homes sit a half mile away from subsidized housing projects. The school does well because of a high level of parent involvement, and it has programs (like art, music, PE) which most public elementary schools in Texas don’t have anymore.

In the same neighborhood is a public Montessori elementary school which is just getting started. Some parents like it, and some don’t – but because it is just starting it’ll be tough to understand its level of quality for a few years. It is a magnet school, and seems like you can transfer to it fairly easily regardless of where you live – but it’ll be nice to be close to school in any case. The city’s magnet school for gifted and talented kids is close by, too.

There are lots of different types of housing in that area, known locally as Montrose. Apartments, duplexes, townhomes, and single-family homes with yards sit literally right next to each other. There’s no zoning, which can be both a bad and a beautiful thing. The population is full of people who can probably be best described as liberal types – college students, young professionals, artists, musicians, and families. Our vegetable co-op is nearby, and you can walk to the city’s flagship Whole Foods. Montrose is as close as Houston gets to Berkeley or Laguna Beach, but with big oak trees on every street instead of an ocean.

Your housing options in Montrose are basically:

1) A house with a big yard, built in about 1920. Beautiful old houses, and within our price range with a bit of a stretch.

2) A townhouse built in the last 5-7 years (Houston’s economy has been booming since about 2000, and lots of townhomes are built). Pricey, but some are just within our price range. Granite countertops, 2500+ square feet, balconies.

3) A few (very few) townhomes built in the late 1970’s-early 1980’s, when Houston’s economy also boomed. These are smaller (1500 square feet or so), but have bigger porches and balconies (land was cheaper then). Very few homes in Houston were built from 1980-2000 because the economy was still recovering from the oil bust.

Kids = Yard!

We’ve tried to understand what life will be like in a few years, when we’ll both be working and kids will be in school.

If Mom stays home with the kids, a suburban yard can be a beautiful thing. The kids come home from school at 3:00, and then can just run around the backyard while Mom keeps half an eye on them and half an eye on dinner, or the legal briefs she brought home from work, or whatever. And then all summer, the kids have a safe, fenced, immediately accessible place to play. (This isn’t maybe a very realistic scenario, but it’s the one everyone imagines will happen in their imagined suburban utopias. What we see in our street instead, however, is that both kids and adults tend to think their fenced-in, buggy yards are boring and blasé. Everyone instead hangs out in the front yard or street, where they socialize and BBQ and have lots of room for throwing around a Nerf ball. We did the same, BB, before babies.)

But what if Mom is working, too? It’s next to impossible to find a job that doesn’t run from 8-5. So the kids are in an after-school program of some sort, where they can play on really nice playground equipment, or learn art and music, or whatever. And once everyone gets home at 5 or 5:30, there’s time to cook dinner, do whatever homework there is, wind down, and go to sleep. Not much time to use the yard. And if summer is spent in a summer program or camp or school, you find the same story – not much time at home to use the yard during the week.

On weekends? You can always walk to the park. There are two nice city parks within a 10-15 minute walk from the neighborhood we’re looking at, plus the elementary school within walking distance, and the middle school with a big field. There’s also open green space at Rice and the University of St. Thomas and the Menil Collection, all plenty big enough to kick a soccer ball around on. And if dad takes the time he would have spent mowing and edging and spends that walking to the park instead, it might be even more enjoyable.

Lots of kids grow up in the city without a yard, and lots of parents raise those kids without a yard, and they all seem to come out OK. We’re not adamantly against having one (although in all respects a small or no yard is ultimately more sustainable than everyone living on a ¼ acre of grass), but we just can’t see ourselves using it much, or paying a huge premium on a place to live just to have one. A yard has some investment value, but so do lots of other things, so that’s not really reason to have a yard, either. Some outside space is a useful thing –space to grow a few plants or play in a little swimming pool or whatever. We use that type of space in our screen porch all the time and can’t see giving it up. But the townhouse—we refer to it as The Ship around here—has that space in an 18’x18’ patio, and a breezy balcony off the kitchen, as well. If you throw a big party, the yard is useful for that day, on the three days of the year when everyone is willing to stand around outside (remember, this is Texas!). But otherwise, is it really that necessary?

Lastly, the very lack of yards, or the very small yards in this area, is precisely why it has so many walkable amenities—the place is dense. The Ship is roughly ½ mile to Whole Foods, ½ mile to Fiesta, ½ mile to Poe Elementary, ½ mile to University of St. Thomas, 1 mile to Wilson Elementary (the public Montessori school), 1 mile to Rice, and 2 miles to the ducks at Hermann Park. And let’s not forget all the co-op preschools, the pottery studios, Art Mix and even church. Why spend all our time behind a fence, when we have the best of the city before us?

Oops.

Today is apparently August 26th.

I guess that means C&D turned 19 months three days ago. Oops. I had completely forgotten.

No surprise, though. We've been busy.

I know, there isn't a time when we're not busy. I never post and say, "Well, it's been pretty boring around here!" But lately, really, we've been busy.

First of all, C&D keep us on our toes. Well, okay, maybe not on our toes. More like, on our feet. Off to the park, off to rock horses, off to bounce balls, to sing, to dance, to stop everything and run to the potty so they can do their business, get up, and turn around, while sticking their index finger perilously close to the product of their bowels and bladder tell anyone within earshot, "pee-pee!" or "poo-poo!" Or, Carmen's favorite, "Did it!"

And then this weekend we began the process of buying a new house. We knew that at some point we would want the babes to be closer to a good school, my work, and the places we visit most. After a possible opportunity to leave Houston fell through, we decided to buckle down and commit to living here. After some casual browsing we realized that the areas we most like (and that are also convenient to Matt's work) are rapidly growing out of our price range, so we began to look more seriously. We knew that once a liveable, lower-priced property emerged on the market, we would need to pounce on it. And then, just as soon as we started looking, we found it. It's a sunny mod townhouse designed by William Stern. There are only two bedrooms, but the master bedroom is big enough that when C&D are ready for their own sleeping space we can creatively split it. The living area upstairs--we call it "the deck" as if the house were a ship--is bright and sunny, with large windows and an open kitchen, living, and dining room. The babes will have a large 18'x18' patio downstairs and a breezy patio off the kitchen upstairs to enjoy, and we will be within walking distance of several great parks. We will also be close to grocery stores (including Whole Foods), schools, and interesting public spaces like the Menil Collection. We're sad at the thought of leaving our neighbors and our little house, but have always known that sooner or later, we'd have to move on, and I guess this is pretty much it.

C&D caught colds this week and Carmen's nose is stuffy. I'm going to help her get back to sleep.

Forgotten

I have almost forgotten there was a time (like, say, last week) when they couldn't talk. Now, they can both say and sign so many things. We have conversations, we follow directions, we dance with our dolls and feed the stuffed horses hay. We follow each other around and imitate each other like a household of parrots.

We say and sign when we are hungry and when we are thirsty, we make jokes (Carmen with a dolly in her arms: "Wa! Wa!" Me: "Carmen, is the dolly hungry?" Carmen drops the dolly on the floor and guffaws.). They ask for their shoes when they want to go outside or walk around when we are out, and they ask for a ride in the car when they are bored. They ask me to sing, and sing, and sing, and we move our hands together to the music. When we are singing along to the songs on the radio they clap at the end of the songs. When Carmen hears the One Fine Day soundtrack, she demands to dance with her crab puppet, while David dances with a penguin. After dinner she runs around with her hand in an oven mitt, calling it a duck. David runs around with the broom after our meals, reminding me that I should sweep the floor. We are not afraid of thunder. Well, not too afraid. Carmen can identify red, and sign most of the colors of the rainbow (and she can sign "waymbo," too) while she draws oblong "sow-kows" on the back of the diagrams from Matt's work. When he comes home, C&D run to the door saying "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" while Carmen will sometimes look at me and say in a small, clear voice, "Mahm-ee."

And yesterday David looked at me and tried to say and sign I Love You.

In the midst of all her growing and changing, Carmen's sleep has become even more fitful. Sometimes she gives up sleeping on her own altogether, like when at four in the morning two days ago I found her straddled across the small of my back, bouncing up and down. When I called her name she responded "diapuw" and after a quick potty and change, I rocked her to sleep while pretending to be interested in the early, early news shows. She craves the opportunity to rest her head in my elbow, my arm straining to hold her sprawling body toward me, as if at night she suddenly remembers she is small and young and afraid and needs the physical reassurance and comfort that she hadn't wanted all day. David, on the other hand, wakes from his naps early so that he can finish them in my lap while my arm goes numb and I stare out the window. So, in case I had forgotten what it was like, I feel like they are the restless sleepers of a year ago.

When babies are born, some things are forgotten. Excited relatives forget their manners, demanding "How are the babies?" on the telephone before a proper howdy-do. Parents forget when they have eaten or slept or showered, keeping track only of their babies' needs and habits. And when Matt's mother sent pictures of her visit to Houston to the family this week, she titled it, "Our Trip to Houston to Visit Twins Carmen and David." Matt and Joyce? Oh, yeah, they live there, too. But we all know the real purpose of the visit.

It is midnight and I have forgotten to go to bed. I probably should. Good night.

She called me Mommy!

Finally. Tell David he's next.

I wonder if she'll remember tomorrow? A few days ago, when she woke up the first word out of her mouth was "tractor." That word she hasn't forgotten.