Sunday, February 13, 2011

Histories

Forgive me while I go all Spirit-of-Elijah on you.


In my slow journey to complete my Young Women's Personal Progress (yeah, I never did it as a teenager. Restarted last year) I decided to take on a little family history project in which I would collect family stories from all of my children's living progenitors. I sent them all the same prompts and questions hoping to get to the good stuff, the funny stuff, the heart-warming tear-jerkers. The first to respond was actually my aunt (who, you may note, is not one of my children's progenitors); I wanted to include an entry for my paternal grandfather (the only one of my kids' great-grandparents who is not living), and I asked my aunts to help me fill in some of the information for him. Then my maternal grandmother responded, whose letters made me laugh harder than I expected. Then my maternal grandfather, who has been having some struggles with recurring cancer. Tonight, I phoned and interviewed Andy's great-grandmother, who is 102 years old. She is the lovely lady pictured above.

So I've got that going on.

I've also been keeping journals for my babies. I write in them every Sunday. I guess they're technically "baby books," though I don't personally consider them such. I do keep a few scraps in there (ultrasound pictures, photobooth strips, the picture Elliot drew for me the day Corryn was born), but mostly it's just me rambling about things they did that week that made me laugh and occasionally gushing about how beautiful and wonderful they are. I intend to keep writing in them until my kids move out of the house, then giving them the journals to keep. One of Andy's teachers did that, and I liked the idea.

Here's the entry for Elliot this week:

2-13-11


Just one more month until I have a two-year-old! You've been having lots of "terrible two" moments, but you're still generally very sweet. We had a couple of tough battles over sleep the past two weeks - there was a spray-bottle of water and some yelling involved (not my proudest moment as a parent). But things are getting much better, and you're even napping again.


Your current obsessions:
  • Robots. Still.
  • Buzz Lightyear
  • Batman
  • Spiderman
  • Your friend Mael
  • Choo-choo trains
  • Cookies
  • STAR WARS
You ask me to play "Star Wars Song! March!" all the time. So Imperial March is put on repeat on my computer. You've been playing with Daddy's old Star Wars toys (R2-D2..."Artoo!"...is your absolute favorite), and you call your lightsaber your "naughty."


When you ask for certain things, we have the understanding that I will do a google-image search of that thing for you. You like to look at the pictures. We commonly do this for:
  • All of your obsessions listed above
  • Happy faces/sad faces
  • Airplanes/helicopters
  • Car crashes
  • "Hot" (fire)
  • Darth Vader/Yoda
  • Milk
  • Water
We've been working on phonics a lot, too, and this morning you asked me what sound a seven makes.

So what I'm trying to say is that the sum of all of this, the whole Gestaltian mess of it, is filled with love. Me, you, our parents, their parents, our kids, and their kids. And loving is hard work.

4 reason(s) to click here:

LJ said...

I have a piece of our family history that I've been avoiding (read: a phone call I've been dreading to make) for about six months now. I think I should get on that before the boy comes.

Also: your baby journals may be the best idea ever invented.

Emily said...

Car crashes!?

Bakes. said...

so here's the thing....i'm pretty sure elliot and i have the same current obsessions. except for his friend Mael, who i haven't met, but i have a pretty good feeling i would love too.

Cupcakes said...

Now your comments are from LJ and Emily Bakes Cupcakes.