Tagged: birthday, family, Oliver, photography
Our Everyday
Sharing our stories, big and small.
Posts from the “childhood” Category
Creative Dance Center’s Nutcracker in a Shell is an abbreviated, updated take on the classic and a festive community event. The performances raise funds for CDC’s non-profit IPAYouth, an organization dedicated to supporting dance education. With only ten rehearsals, over sixty dancers and one dress rehearsal the dancers have to be ready to perform. It is a lot of work, a lot of waiting, a lot of coordination and a lot of details. And it is a lot more than just a performance.
The Dress Rehearsal
Tagged: CDC, Creative Dance Center, dance, Lucas, Nutcracker, Penny, performance, photography
My Oliver. My last born. My easiest and most challenging, my most confident and most doubtful. You haven’t needed me as much, parting easily, not lingering or hanging on my words. Yet sometimes you need me so much, too much, more than I can give in a minute or a day. Let me spread it out over your day, your year, your lifetime. But to you a lifetime is inconsequential, it is urgent today. It demands all of you and therefore it should, and needs, to demand all of me. So much swirling and twisting and tumbling and twirling. Your thoughts dance and leap and make big and overwhelming movements, never settling. You wish for puberty so your body can grow but your mind is already racing ahead.
You are the class clown. You are a natural leader. In some moments you are entirely free and wild and others you are trapped.
I don’t know what comes next and I don’t know that I will be the answer but keep telling me all the things that fill you, good and bad, and I will be my best as often as I can.
I’ve asked you to stay small so I can carry and cradle you, my baby. Your answer is always “Yes, mommy”, with a giggle. But for your 11th birthday I hope your wish for growth comes true. Take up your space, keep demanding my attention, grow in all directions. I will simply have to grow stronger so I can keep carrying you, my baby.
The kids are getting older. Cousins have gone off to college. Neighbors have moved. High school, middle school, new friends, old friends, hectic schedules, competing priorities. It is a lot harder to gather my kids let alone gather with family and friends. But despite it all, for another year, our Halloween traditions continue.
As Lucas is Confirmed, accepting responsibility of his faith, we celebrate the friendships and the support and love from family that blesses him each day.
Tagged: Confirmation, family, Lucas, photography
There is nothing more poetic, more spontaneous and more memorable than a first. They create an indelible mark on our very fabric. And there is nothing more prescient about a first than their inability to be replicated. And there’s the sting.
Until you have a child…
I wrote this 7 years ago for Lucas’ 7th birthday. Now he’s 14 and I’m excited for him to experience his first Homecoming as I am flooded with memories of my own. The dressing up, the dinner out, the dancing, the independence and the friends. This is his first, not mine, and these are his memories to make. But boy is it fun going along for the ride!
Tagged: childhood, homecoming, photography, teenagers
When the kids were young we filled every weekend with outings whether to a museum or a farm, hands-on indoors or climbing outdoors. We packed the snacks, packed it all in in the hopes these memories would be indelible and if not, we’d remember for them with the hundreds of photos I’d capture chasing them around. In all our outings we never went to National Children’s Museum. This past weekend I explored this small gem of an experience with my soon to be 11 and 12 year olds. The bubble machine worked easily for us, knowing to raise the bar quickly before it could pop. We knew to stack the cars with weights to make them go faster and we hit home runs in the baseball simulator, we were able to make the basket with the air propelled basketball game and set records on the speed reaction game. They hit their heads multiple times climbing through the Dream Machine and came speeding down the slide, their weight propelling them. They were by far the oldest and biggest kids in the museum and they had the most fun. They understood the special, they marveled when they should and they simply loved playing. While I loved our outings when they were little I was equally exhausted. But this day we all got to be kids again.
Tagged: National Children's Museum, photography, play, Washington DC
The Teri and Shari Malone Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to recognizing and developing the talents of selected eighth grade students from Loudoun County schools through scholarship grants. The Foundation is committed to remembering a talented set of twins who tragically lost their lives shortly after finishing their eighth grade year in school. Friends of the family established this Foundation to honor the girls in 1991.
Middle schools in Loudoun County, and select dance studios, choose the current year’s recipients, selected in one of the five areas of study in which the Malone twins themselves excelled. While Lucas is a student in Fairfax County because he studies dance in Loudoun County they were able to grant an exception. We are grateful for this recognition, for the staff and coaches at the dance studio that believe in him, that inspire him and that gave him this opportunity.
Tagged: Creative Dance Center, dance, Lucas, Malone foundation, photography
Playing with their Christmas toys, 2012
The other night Oliver asked me if he could buy lunch the next day. He was excited about the pizza and the chilled sliced peaches. My heart warmed and I broke out in laughter; the details of the chilled and the sliced included.
This was our first week back to school. Back in person, in new schools for Lucas and Penny. After so much time of being disconnected, separated, idle and lonely it was joyous to wake them up, dress them up, pack them up and walk them out of the house to see friends and neighbors emerge to a new day. They are connecting with old friends while trying to make new, figuring out which way to walk and which way to look while I obsess over who might be mean and if a year practically lost academically will be recoverable.
Lucas comes home and complains of the age of the school and the lack of windows. He’s not quite vibing yet as he’s adjusting to the new student body that will be his world for the next four years. Penny is excited on certain days when she sees her closest friends and dreads the other days because she has Math. And Oliver is simply happy and content and easily reports the news of the day, no social anxieties plaguing his day.
I am excited and apprehensive of the next four years that await Lucas. I know I, as a parent, need to step up my game and learn all the things that matter to colleges while ensuring he’s well adjusted, well rounded and well liked. I am anxious for Penny because she is my daughter and navigating friendships and herself in these next two years is probably the most transformative and fraught. And I am comforted by Oliver. Before angst and moodiness, before he cares about his outfit, before he gets too big to pick up, before I am no longer his center. He simply looks forward to tomorrow and his chilled sliced peaches.
June 2014
Tagged: childhood, parenthood, photography, Writing
Our Everyday 