Modest Needs
Feeding America

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It’s a beautiful night, with a waning full moon. The heatwave has broken. A breeze blows. Lately we’ve been reading The Rainbabies, which features the beautiful Moon. (And it has an unexpected sweetness for me because the main characters are an older couple who dearly long for a child, and are given the miracle of that gift.)

Thus a small poem!

We live so far away from the din and havoc the comes with living in an urban area like Silicon Valley. About five miles from our home is the entrance to the Santa Teresa County Park. (There’s a trailhead about a mile from our house, but I went to the main part this time.) We see the hills from our home, so today I took Claire for a little hike. We wanted to see what nature had to offer.

Summer in California is the season of drought, dust, and death. The grasses turn “golden” (i.e., tinderbox dry and brown), and there is no rain for about five months. It is certainly not California at its prettiest. (I’m partial to the emerald green hills of the rainy season.) Here’s an example of the “hills of gold”:

And the poor parched ground:

Nevertheless, nature knowns no season. It always exists. It’s always interesting. So we headed out on a trail…

Even during summer, flowers manage to bloom.

The view from on high is expansive!

But we also had to keep our eyes sharp for other things.

Looking around reveals interesting shapes…

And glimpses of a bird soaring high in the sky (that teeny dot in the blue is not dust on your screen!).

Then we were treated to a surprise! A turkey vulture perched on a dead tree, I guess airing its wings. It sat still for several minutes like this!

Once it flew away, we returned our attention to the path.

We found a branch covered with lichen. Such interesting colors and textures!

And we also found some pinecones and hardened pine tree sap. We brought the rock of resin home for later exploration and research.

At the end of our walk, we ate a snack at a picnic table. On the way home, I asked Claire what her favorite part of our adventure was. She said it was “sitting and looking.” It was so quiet and breezy there. A lovely Monday morning.

I’ve been wanting to give Claire a barn to play with, but many of them are outrageously expensive. So I found an old box and, with a little cutting and taping and painting, ended up with a barn. Claire helped me paint the barn red. Then I took over with the roof and trim, and collaged the inside of the box. I’ve had the paint, paper, and tape on hand for years, so for a very minimal cost we have a toy barn! It may not last as long as a wooden one, but we had fun making it (especially me). Now all we need are some farm animals!

One of my sisters visited later in June, and Claire was pretty horrible to her too. After the first day in which Claire was shy and sweet, she would raise her voice to her aunt. “Don’t say words!” “Go away!” “Don’t look at me!” These demands were accompanied by screeching. (Claire didn’t have the same feelings toward her uncle, however; he was just nifty.) We took the opportunity to admonish her about being kind, but the bottom line is that in this new house and new life there was an unfamiliar person taking a lot of my attention and time, and this just didn’t sit well with Claire.

A couple weeks ago a friend of mine came to visit, and Claire behaved similarly. She warmed up to my friend a bit, but would bluntly state her wishes too, such as “Don’t talk to me.” Then last Friday, when her beloved babysitter came for the first time in a month, she decided the babysitter was no good either. After about 45 minutes with A__, she didn’t want the babysitter to sit in the same room, or touch any of her toys, and so on. I got a call about an hour before I was due home; A__ informing me what was happening to let me know. I decided that as long as Claire was safe (not self-injuring or something), that I would come home at my planned time. When I came home she’d been crying and wailing for me and clung to me.

She’s even been mean to her father in this way. And increasingly, Claire says, “I want to go back to the old house.” I conclude that this has been a seismic shift for her. If she can be taken away from her home, then what about Mommy? What if Mommy is taken away, or she is taken from Mommy? Many days she doesn’t want to go anywhere, sometimes not even outside. Not to the grocery store, the park, for a walk. Pushing her is a catalyst for a tantrum; then everyone is miserable, so what’s the point?

And the tantrums! Oh, they have become ever more voluble and frequent.

However, it’s not all negative stuff. Claire is as sweet, playful, and loving as ever — even more so. So much change in a little life…

We’ve done a few activities, such as:

Berry picking in June!

“Washing” windows:

Baking cakes (and licking batter off the beater):

Having backyard picnics:

Enjoying the sprinkler:

And making stuff, like sand clay and painting birdhouses! Claire made the bowl with a little shaping help from me, and I made the candle holder.

I painted the white coat and Claire added her flair:

Onward to August!

This is a photo of Uvas Reservoir. It was an impeccably beautiful day, taken during my sister and brother-in-law’s visit in June. I want to come here often with Claire (once she decides she wants to leave her comfortable home and explore the world).

Can it be July? Already?

Yesterday in the bath, Claire said she was performing a science experiment. She has Munchkin foam letters, and they stick to surfaces in the tub and the stall walls. So she took the letter J and put it on her head to see if it would stick. She shook her head, and it fell off. She did this four or five times. Then she said, “Let’s see if the letter L will stick.” She repeated the procedure, and indeed it did! (My occasional guilt for allowing her to watch television in the early morning was alleviated in this moment. She learns a great deal from her favorite shows: Caillou, Curious George, Olivia, Word World, Sesame Street, Between the Lions, and My Friends Tigger & Pooh.)

At the same time, she still needs lots of cuddling and mothering and fathering. Her sleep remains disrupted from the move. I added a makeshift curtain to her window to help darken the room a bit. The challenge, it seems, is that on days she naps she has difficulty falling asleep, and on days she does not nap she falls asleep early and well but it is a long, cranky, and sometimes tearful afternoon and evening until then!

Last night I rocked and sang to her, and she was all wiggles and squirms. After 25 minutes of this I told her it was time to go to sleep and I put her in the crib. She protested with a whine. I covered her and said nighty-night. Then I left. The whining continued. I did some chores in the kitchen as the whining progressed to crying. First it was protest crying — not entirely real, not fully committed — but after half an hour she was crying at full bore.

I went to her and asked, “What’s with all this llama drama?” (See books by Anna Dewdney for reference.) She asked for a tissue to blow her nose, and then I rocked her. As she lay in my arms with a tear-streaked face, she spoke in a tremulous voice. She said she’d felt alone and that she was crying like a baby so I would come back. She said she had a boo-boo on her knee, and so I kissed it. Then she explained how the Kleenex helps get the boogers out of her nose.

So I rocked and sang again, for about 25 minutes, and she snuggled against me and fell asleep. At 9:20 I put her down in the crib, and she slept until 6:45 (earlier than usual, but much better than 5:20 a.m.!)

In a few moments we’ll head out to a farm and pick berries with new friends from down the street. The boys are 7 and 5, and they love Claire and (so far) play well with her. I notice that Claire really plays well with older kids who understand turn-taking and sharing. She doesn’t follow game rules very well yet and isn’t as organized, but she has more fun with kids who don’t grab toys from her and understand when she “uses her words.” The extra benefit of these new friends is that I really really like their mom!

More writing to come at some point soon.

Tuesday we move. And start to settle in. And return to the old house to take a few stray items and clean a bit. We return the keys on May 31, and this chapter of our lives is closed.

This home has been Claire’s home. When we first made the offer, she said she didn’t want a new house. She liked this one. But over the past two months, with repeated trips to the new home, she has gradually warmed up to the possibility. Husband painted her room lavender, and I made a cozy place in the cubby hole under the stairs, and she has discovered the wonderful possibilities of the back yard. So she has been remarkably laid-back as boxes pile up around her, and all that is familiar disappears. She was even eager to take her decorations off her bedroom walls.

I’m running on empty, but I feel good about how everything is going. Next time I write a post, it’ll be in the new home!