Of Phoenicians and Bubbles

As I read from the history book, Andres nestled against me on the sofa.   He stared outside into the blistery snowdrifts scattering about, and the wind pummeling the window.  He was captured, completely still, listening as if there was a movie behind his eyes, which I'm sure there absolutely was, as if he blinked he would miss something.

"Have you ever used a straw to blow bubbles in milk?"  The text prompted me, which engaged him, jolting him out of his reverie.

"Yes!"

"Well that is what made the ancient Phoenicians the best at glass making.  They invented glass blowing, which they used a long metal pipe and dipped it into the sticky, melted glass, then they blow air from their lungs through the pipe into the glass, making a bubble at the end.  And no one else had done it before, and no one at the time was doing anything like that.   They were the best glass makers of their time."

Later at the end of our chapter, there were review questions, and one of the first ones seemed to be the most easy.

"What were the ancient Phoenicians the best at doing?"

Without skipping a beat, he blurted out, "Blowing bubbles in their milk!"

Naturally, we both cracked up, because of course we knew what he meant, but the visual of blowing milk bubbles was too strong of a schematic link, and it came to him without censor.

Later that night at the table, we were sharing our day with Papa over dinner, and Andres recounted the story.  At the line where he fumbled, he burst into a giggle that quickly escalated into a chuckle, then before we knew it, we each were laughing around him, even Raph who was just moved by Andres' laughter and couldn't fully appreciate the punch line.  It was so silly, the idea of these advanced ancient people blowing bubbles in their milk!  The more he thought about it, the more he laughed, and we followed suit.  It's the best kind of contagion, his laughter, and we were all blissfully infected.

It is hard, the home school thing.  It's work, and it's time, and it's a give-a-thon akin to nursing, or potty training or any other intense part of parenting, but can be, and slowly is becoming more fun.  I love it.

When I can remember not to take it all too seriously, when I can remember that being his teacher is my J.O.B., when I can remember that he's still oh so young, and I should be impressed that he not only knows how to say "polytheistic," but can describe the ancient Romans and Egyptians as being such, I am humbled, and fearsomely inspired by who he is.  Not who he will become one day, but as he is now, he is amazing.  He is a marvel.

When he laughs his trademark heart-moving laugh, and his dimples pierce his almond cheeks, and his deep, keen eyes are pressed into dark-lashed crescents, the symphony of him as a person moves my soul.

And it's my bet he's right.  If the Phoenicians were best at blowing glass, then there's a mighty good chance they were also the ancient world's best at blowing bubbles in their milk.

And the Academy Goes to...

Andres has been watching homemade Lego movies since last summer, and for Christmas all he wanted were the tools to make his own Lego movie, specifically Roman Lego Movie.  Well, I can imagine Santa, like us, had a very hard time finding those Roman Legos, and got him Knights and Castles Legos instead, which he plays with as if they're Romans.  When he saw his friend Samuel's cute Lego movies, he immediately had me email transcribe his email message to Samuel via Samuel's mom, Rachel, asking Samuel to teach him how to do his own movies.  So they spent a morning creating this movie at Samuel's house, and then we came home to put it all together!  He's so proud, and eager to make more!

My Raphael

The problem was this.  Raph didn't want to do school with us.  He's only three, after all, and although some research shows that early academics within certain social-economical demographics as soon as a kid has cut his first tooth does help with overall academic success later in life, I feel that for our family it's not necessary.  I wanted Raph to have a sweet childhood, and allow him to be little and play without choking him full of data.  That will come, surly, but now, right now, he's only three.  And I want to honor him by letting him have this golden time to be just a little guy, and discover his world on his terms.

He wanted to play with Andres, but couldn't when we were doing school.  School, three solid hours at least of focused and dedicated teaching, meant Raph was playing by himself or watching PBS.  I've usually been pretty persnickety about screen time, and letting him watch three hours of TV a day, even having the TV on for that long, drove me absolutely nuts.  Also, there seemed to be a massive inequity, while Andres got all my attention for that length of time, Raph was required to play by himself or indulge in TV.  So we changed our home school plan back to FLEX, allowing Andres all day on Wednesday to be with friends, and a day for Raph and I to connect and do some fun stuff together.

It's been a good change for all of us, although I won't use the curriculum FLEX gives us, and plan to purchase the curricula from CVA, because it's just that good.  Andres has become madly fascinated with ancient Rome and Greek cultures.

"Mom," he said one day, "I don't want to study Spanish anymore.  Can I study Latin?"

Sure thing there, seven year old son.  You want to study Latin, let's do it!  So I found him a wonderful curriculum at our local library, of all places.  What luck!  It's been fun for me, too, and to see him giddy to learn this new (ancient) language has been nothing short of wonderful for the both of us.

But the transition has been best for my relationship with Raph.  Wednesdays while Andres has been at a brick and mortar school,  we've been able to do things just he and I, and I feel that connective thread between us is viable again, less fragile.  We have so far created the little practice of going to the library, then going swimming at the gym.

Our Raph, as I've said before, is designed to be in water.  It's his favorite place.  He's taken baths close to two hours long, until the water is chilly, and his fingers have pruned, but it doesn't bother him in the least, with his selection of Batman toys and a random Hot Wheels, he's content as any fish.  It's a vision to behold, since he was less than one year old, when we took him to Seaside when he saw the ocean stretching to the horizon, he waddled towards it as fast as his newly used legs could carry him, an expression of determination and focus I hadn't seen in his eyes until then.  And he rushed into the lapping waves like a baby turtle, propelled to go there, driven by some innate command to run into the water and relish it.  

Now we go to the pool, his most favorite thing in the week, and we play in the water, and ride the river, and he rolls around as stealthily as an otter, or sea lion.  His need to be submersed in water hasn't lessened over time, in fact, it's grown more independent, and there are times that he pushes my supportive hand off him, and he doesn't struggle or flail in the water, he just sinks, his beautiful brown eyes wide under the surface and staring at me as he slowly descends to the floor of the pool, his curls billowing around his cherubic face, little bubbles escaping his open mouth smile, before finally reaching our for me again to be pulled to the surface where he sucks in a gulp of air.  You must breath air, my little fish.  I confess it's a little disturbing to see him like that under water and sinking with his eyes focused on me, and I always feel relief when he finally reaches for me, ready to surface.

His new thing that I've rather mandated he learn is to hold on to me as we count to three before sucking in a breath, holding our noses, and with him on back and his arms around my neck, we submerge, swimming a length of the pool before finally popping up at the other wall. He amazes me, and I wonder how God will use his passion for water, what purpose will it serve this little man, or the world?

Raph's favorite thing is helping me cook.  I remember when Andres was this age and the chair scraped from the table over the linoleum to the stove where he eagerly awaited instructions, and it eventually broke my heart when his interest to help faded.  Here comes my Raph now, when he sees me at the stove, rushes to a chair where he scrapes it across the floor to crawl up and stand by my side, eager and ready to cook.  Sure there are mishaps, such as yesterday when we were making cookies (our favorite thing to cook) and the Kitchen Aide was full of creamed eggs, butter, vanilla, and sugars, when we had just added two cups of flour, a couple teaspoons of baking soda and a cup of oats when he too eagerly flipped the power switch from 0 to 9 before I could stop him and, you can imagine, it looked as if it had snowed in our kitchen, and Raph and I were spooks looking askance at each other through powder-coated eyelashes.  But then there are those small magical moments when last week he and I had made vegan Peanut butter cookies together (vegan because we were out of milk, butter, and eggs, and I happen to have an awesome vegan cookie cookbook for just such moments--they were the best peanut butter cookies ever, btw), and my job was to roll the little balls of dough, and his job, with his long-pronged fork raised and ready, was to embellish the cookies, first this way, then the other way.  He felt so big and grown up, and after I showed him that we wanted the little boxes and lines on the top, he created his own adorable Peanut butter Cookie Calling Card, by gently pushing down one of the tiny boxes left by the fork indents.  One little peanut butter cookie dough box in each cookie, smashed.  He was so proud.  He calls them Cookiebutter Cookies.  And he still talks about that day, and our special moment together.

I'm trying to get better at capturing these moments with him, and so I rushed to our camera where the batteries were dead.   I'm left holding the image of his little pudgy index finger so carefully pressing a tiny piece of dough flat into the cookie as a treasure in my heart.

I've taken to babysitting on Fridays for my friend, Staci, and her sweetheart of a little boy comes out to play with the boys.  It's been a double win for us because we love having her little guy over, but also I get a little cash, which we so desperately need.

One week I was able to take that cash and with a coupon Raph and I went to the zoo, for the first time since he was 9 months old.  And it was spectacular.  He marveled at everything, especially the fish.

Our day at the zoo.  He loved the Arapaima (huge fish) display in the Amazon house.  These guys above are trout.
But still cool.

We had a blast, and he was so fun to play with.  Afterwards, we used some of that cash to actually go to Burgerville for our lunch--I KNOW!  A real restaurant, just he and I, and we had a little date.  We've never done that, and would never be able to afford it had it not been for that babysitting gig.  It was a momentous day for us both, and we loved it.

He's quite a joker, too our little Raph, and his sense of humor is so much like Aaron's.  But this week he's said two little things that I need to jot down to hold onto for years to come because I thought they're cute, and they cracked me up.

One evening I got him out of the tub and started to rub his wet curls with the towel, a thing he has always loathed, and he blurted out "Stop, Mom!"  I looked at him shivering cold and wet.

"Honey I need to dry your hair a bit."

With sudden authority and a touch of gravely tenor to his voice he replied, "Don't dry my hair, I'm BATMAN."

I thought it was a good effort at stopping me, and as I chuckled at him, pulling rank as it were, he shuffled away to his room, his Bat-Hair Bat-Dripping Wet.

Then the other day after lunch I sat at the table with the boys as they finished their salads.  I was annoyed, as it sometimes happens after eating roughage, and covered my mouth to discreatly remove the culprit.

"What's wrong with your mouth?" he asked with a mouth full of food.

"I have something in my teeth," I admitted.

He shrugged and shoveled another mouthful of salad in, then asked, "Is it a spider?"

I laughed out loud at that, and told him no, I didn't have a spider stuck in my teeth.  But he was concerned, and wanted to get to the bottom of it.

"A tarantula?"

"No, not a tarantula."

"A bug?"

Seriously, what does this kid think I have in my mouth?  Finally I told him it was just a bit of lettuce, but he wasn't convinced.  He just kept eating and looking at my teeth with skepticism.   He's a fierce arachnophobe, and for some reason he jumped to the worst case scenario, a spider stuck in my teeth!

It's rough at times, naturally, and Aaron and I are spread very, very thin in all things right now, it can be hard to really enjoy the tiny little miracles, the precious fleeting moments, but I pray that I delight in my boys as they're little for only a short while, and they are indeed from heaven, so rare and special, the sparkling stars of my life.