Eli is standing by the side of my bed in his pjs, clutching his patch blanket, Little Blue Bear, Moosie, and his small pottery train engine. He is angling for some Saturday morning television. “Let’s watch the goose movie again, Mama!”

“Yeah!” adds Ben, walking down the hall, “Let’s watch the goose movie!”

“Do you want to watch any of the story,” I ask groggily, “or just the geese and planes?”

“Geese and planes!” they chorus happily, “Geese and planes!”

Click on over to Literary Mama to read the rest!

A book recently dictated by Eli to one of his preschool teachers:

Once upon a time I made a book.

Once upon a time I was at school and Daddy was not. I made a book.

At the end of the book I said, “It’s a pretty good book.”

The end.

May he always have such confidence in his writing!

I had to tear myself away from Inauguration coverage today to work lunch duty at my son’s school, but seeing this sign in person made it all worth it:

In school the other day, Ben made an image of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington, DC. His teacher emailed to tell us that Ben created a text box to quote MLK saying “I have a dream that little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and girls and walk together as brothers and sisters.” “He wrote the quote from memory,” his teacher reported, “and everything was spelled correctly and he used quotation marks. Wow!”

I’m not so surprised by his accurate use of quotation marks, really (he didn’t live through the copyediting of a book for nothing), but pleased that he knows the lines and understands what they mean.

We didn’t participate in today’s National Day of Service, as we had hoped, because Ben was still too sick when we would have needed to sign up, but we’ve been talking about MLK, Jr. a lot around here and this morning Ben drew another picture, this time with no text, in honor of the day. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with after we watch the Inauguration tomorrow.

We have a computer in the kitchen which is essentially our stereo (thank you, iTunes) and which Ben uses to compile important airline facts, look at airplane designs, and occasionally do some writing. The other day I saw this on screen:

RULES*

1. No one near the stage, otherwise the puppets will be scared and the show will stop immediately.

2. The theater is not a play area.

3. No screaming or yelling.

4. If the intermission is longer than expected, no saying, “I wonder when this awful intermission will be over?”

5. No running.

*If you hear a whistle blow, one of the rules has been broken.

I think I’ll go out and buy a whistle.

Mariah has arrived and the boys are delighted, as you might be able to tell from how they decorated her bedroom door: a couple airplanes, a cable car on the Mariah Street/Gruner Avenue line, and many, many bows. They are still surprised by the sleeping habits of a teenager, curious about her vegan eating habits, but most of all thrilled by her presence and the excuse to use Skype now to chat with her family. What took us so long? We can also Skype with friends on sabbatical in Paris, and if/when some other friends move to Delhi, we’ll work out the time difference and Skype with them, too.

I just hope at some point the novelty wears off enough that we can talk without the boys jumping up and down and launching rocket ships across the screen.

Every night at dinner, we take turns talking about our highs and lows for the day. Last night, with sushi and champagne to ring in the New Year, we asked the boys about their highlights (no need to think back over the lows) and their resolutions for the year.

Ben’s highlight: visiting France
resolution: to get a response from the people at Boeing when he sends in his designs and seating plans for a new 797 plane.

Eli’s highlight: visiting France and making his beloved pottery train in preschool
resolution: to visit a new city

Eli’s resolution will come true in April; we hope the folks at Boeing might feel sympathetic toward on an enthusiastic kid and send more than a form letter… stay tuned.

Ben and his friend were in the bedroom playing war. Because they are the kinds of boys they are, the game involved lego and much discussion but very little discernible war play. Still, because I am the kind of mom I am, I suggested some other more friendly narratives in which to involve their lego. Eli listened attentively and then offered his peace plan:

“All war, go home! Have dinner! Go to sleep!”

So the diary seems not to be Tony’s grandmother’s after all. The references to “Mr. Parkford” had seemed a formal, but perhaps not too unusual, way to refer to her husband, but I was letting that go until I came to the entry for May 7th: “[Children] bought their mother a book and some flowers for Mother’s Day.” So is this the nanny keeping daily notes of the children’s activities and meals? More research is required.

In the meantime, here’s another entry (and yes, as you might guess from reading this, the Parkfords were big fans of the horses. I spent my first Mother’s Day nursing a colicky Ben at the side of a race track because it was such a treat for Tony’s mom.):

Saturday, July 16th, 1938

Left home at 7:30 A.M. for British Columbia. Went up the coast straight through S. Barbara, S. Maria, San Luis Obispo, Salinas, San Francisco to Petaluma.

Ate a picnic lunch consisting of turkey sandwiches, milk, cucumbers, fruit — near Pismo Beach. Collected some Associated stamps along the way. Got a glimpse of some of the horses at the Rodeo at Salinas. Saw Hoover’s home and part of the Stanford campus at Palo Alto. Saw Bay Meadows and Tanforan at San Francisco.

In trying to find Golden Gate bridge, a corporal in training camp told us we were going too fast. Got a glimpse of Palace of Fine Arts. Saw the Goodman’s home and the Fisher’s home. Enjoyed the bridge hugely — saw Alcatraz and San Quentin. Went through a tunnel.

Ate dinner at [illegible] at San Rafael and then drove to Petaluma and spent night at Petaluma hotel. Bed at 10:30 P.M. Tired. Drove 486 miles today.

Everybody’s garage holds some mix of trash and treasure; ours is slightly more interesting — to me, at any rate — because it also holds boxes and bags of things saved by Tony’s parents. They didn’t move often, but when they did, apparently, not a lot of weeding or sorting happened first. So cookbooks and ticket stubs and artwork and bills and jewelry and newspaper clippings and silverware all wound up in boxes together, and here we are, years later, still finding surprises.

A large plastic tub of crumpled newspaper. On closer inspection, the crumpled newspaper was protecting small clay objects: Pre-Colombian pottery from Tony’s parents’ art collection. Glad I didn’t toss it into the recycling.

A bag of cat litter. We don’t have a cat. Tony’s parents never had a cat.

2 small Calphalon saucepans (one with a lid!)

The 2 backseat headrests for our Hyundai.

Tony’s 1st and 2nd grade report cards. He did very well.

One large, square copper plate for etching. Unetched.

Tony’s grandfather’s real estate license.

3 silver trays.

A checkbook-sized magnetic Scrabble game (excellent!)

Copies of the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and L’Italia, dated November 23, 1963, reporting on JFK’s assassination.

A wine notebook, with tasting notes from the 1950s and 60s.

Boxes of slides from European travels, circa 1950.

A small cardboard box containing Remington cartridges, apparently from the previous owner of this house. Need to call SFPD for information on disposing of these.

A binder with notes, sketches, and a full proposal for a sculpture titled “Flying Flag” that Tony’s dad submitted to San Francisco’s Hyatt Regency hotel (a hotel that had previously commissioned a sculpture from him).

Tony’s grandmother’s journal for 1938, kept in a leather-bound “Business Yearbook” embossed with her husband’s name. This treasure deserves fuller examination; in the meantime, a brief excerpt:

Thursday, April 21, 1938

[Tony’s mother Nancy was 11; her brother Geoffrey a year younger]

Usual school day. Nancy had a French lesson at 3:10 P.M. Went to Dr. Dillon’s office at 4:30 PM. Geoffrey played at home after school. Nancy has 4 new petticoates — length 38 in., size 14.
Breakfast: orange juice, oatmeal, bacon, toast, milk
Lunch: steak, c. potatoes [creamed?], beans, spinach, rhubarb, milk, cake
Supper: tomato soup, cottage cheese, scrambled eggs, jello, cake, milk

We have a long way to go, but we might some day be able to park both cars in the garage. In the meantime, I’m going to be reading Tony’s grandmother’s journal and unearthing more about family life in the 1930s. Stay tuned…