Play Ball

This picture warms my soul. Tom coached Christopher's baseball team this spring. This picture says it all. Father pitching to son in the instructional league of Little League. He loved it and it really made Christopher love the game. He put his heart, and spirit and love for the game into coaching. I see my husband and his dad together and they are total pals. They love going to Yankee games together and watching any and all sports together. Their phone conversations are about all of the New York teams. It's like from a bygone era. His dad is from the Bronx, and like anyone who grew up near Yankee stadium, the love of the game is coursing through their veins. I see my husband passing this relationship on to my son. It's great. He's a great dad. Happy Father's Day.

Tooth Fairy

The tooth fairy came for Meg for the first time last night. Meghan wrote her a cute note and left the tooth in a little blue Tiffany jewelry box. I was excited to see how excited she would be when she woke up this morning. Instead, this is what I heard at 6:08 am. "THE TOOTH FAIRY DIDN'T COME LAST NIGHT!!!!!!!!!!" I went running in to help her look. "SHE DIDN'T EVEN TAKE MY NOTE, SHE JUST BENT IT!!!!" I helped her locate the cursory $2 and looked at the note, showing her that the fairy had written her a tiny little note on the back. "I DON'T EVEN BELIEVE IN THE TOOTH FAIRY!!! I WANT MY TOOTH BACK!!"
Hmmmmmm. How did my skeptical daughter get to this place? Oh that's right. She needs to go to bed earlier. She's killing me. Mad at the tooth fairy. Mad at everyone. I said to Tom, how does she not believe? Where did this come from? He said, "I think she believes in the tooth fairy. She's just mad at her."
Starting the day as such is usually an indicator for how the rest of the day will play out. I'll keep you posted.

Basement (Before Pictures)

Now that the porch is all done (photos to follow another day) we are moving on to the basement refinish. Warning: these before pictures are not for the weak of heart.


Creepy



Gross, right?

Too damp...

Too dank...

Too dark.

The view to the Laundry Room. A laundry room re-do is on the wish list. Highly unlikely that it will ever be nicer than what you see here.



This cozy space has been my "home gym". I'm hoping for something more contemporary. Notice the hot water pipes overhead.



Grow

I'm feeling that end of school feeling, where I am looking forward to not making lunches and lazy mornings but at the same time feeling a slight buzz of panic about what I will do with the kids 24/7. It's definitely much easier now than even a year ago, but they can go from zero to fighting in no time flat around here. I'm feeling really bittersweet about the end of this school year also because Erin will be going into fifth grade, which means only one more year of having all of my babies accounted for under one roof. Next is middle school, and school buses. Less control on my part and it's freaking me out. Meghan will be finished with kindergarten and that's the end of another era. She's really not a baby anymore. And Christopher will continue to do his thing with what I hope will be a seamless transition from second to third grade. The only difference there is that he will be "upstairs" with the big kids. Meghan still cries when I have to leave her classroom or drop her off at dance, Christopher calls for me up to 5 times after bedtime to "take his dreams" and ask if he can sleep in our bed, and Erin hasn't walked into school with her classmates at all this year, opting instead to walk to the kindergarten playground with me to see her sister off. Often I get irritated or roll my eyes and long for personal space, but I'm thinking that I'd better be careful what I wish for because as Darius Rucker says it won't be like this forever.

TouchStone

I had lunch yesterday with an old friend. She went to college with me, and lived down the hall from me in my freshman year dorm. We hit it off right away with the same oddball sense of humor and cemented our friendship early in the fall of 1990 when a stereotypical mean girl in our hall lashed out at her in a stereotypical mean girl way. Soon our schedules were synched with English classes and Stage Makeup electives and since she was a year ahead of me I would basically take her schedule and go register a few days later with the same classes. We have the same name and our last names Lyons and Logan were so similar that we were practically interchangeable, and answered to both. With Jenny around I was never alone. We pledged a sorority together (her idea) and ironically, but when she lost interest and found a new circle of friends I became more enmeshed in the sorority and had to find other friends to fill my time. We would always circle back and were each other's touchstone when we needed it. She graduated and quite literally travelled the world and I still had one year of college that I stretched to two, with no interest in growing up or finding a job. I worked at the on-campus daycare and lived on snippets of allowance that my parents still sent me. Against my will I graduated and finally found a job in NYC. Jenny had been back in New York for some time, working glamourous jobs in fashion and for magazines. Occasionally we would run into each other. She went to Colorado and I to Texas and began what I refer to as my "uptight newlywed phase". We weren't in each other's wedding parties but went to each other's weddings. As we had babies we gradually got more in touch, again circling back to the comfortable place we once were. I ended up in Connecticut eight years ago, now she's been here almost three. Now we see each other about once a month, sometimes more sometimes less. But it's like we never left.
When we get together now at the tail end of our 30's we marvel at where we are... sitting in a chi-chi restaurant in Old Greenwich, walking around the boutiques, pretending to not be shocked at the price tags on the clothes ($275 for a cardigan!!!!!) and settling on buying a pair of $9 earrings. Just a couple of kids from Brooklyn and Staten Island, playing dress up and trying to be grown ups. I'm glad to have you back.