It's All Downhill From Here

So, our new neighborhood is lovely, with trees and wildlife (there was a deer in the middle of the road this week, and 2 of his friends waiting on the other side), and HILLS.  The hills are so scenic and....hilly.  When we were first looking at houses, I appreciated the beauty of the hills, but I also would think every time we pulled up to a house, "Could the kids ride bikes here?"  You see, Natalie was just learning to ride without training wheels at our old house, so it was forefront in my mind.  Still, I ended up telling myself that if I can ride a bike on a hill (OK, I can at least ride down a hill, if not up), then they will also be able to do this at some point.

Fast forward to the first week we are in the new house.  Liam has been asked to play by a boy a bit older than him.  Yay!  He is making friends, and seems excited to play with them!  They played outside for a bit, and then came back to the house asking if Liam could ride his bike to the end of the cul-de-sac  with his friend.  It's not a long street.  But we are at the top, and the cul-de-sac is at the bottom.  I questioned some more, and they said they would just go down to the bottom and ride where it is mostly flat.  Trying not to embarrass him in front of his new, older friend, I raised my eyebrows and tried to make eye contact with Liam to ask, "Are you SURE you want to do this?  We haven't ridden on the hills yet."  You see, Liam is not a confident bike rider.  In fact, in Texas he never, ever asked to ride.  We basically had to force him to learn to ride, and practicing involved many deep sighs and "Do we have to?"'s  As soon as he gets on a bike you can see his unease and awkwardness.  But Holy Peer Pressure, Batman! here he was asking to ride his bike on his own, with a friend!  I was so impressed by this show of bravery and adventure and chutzpah.  Liam can be so cautious.  Honestly, I was terrified at the thought of him riding on that hill.  Still, I'm aware that sometimes my own fears leak over and puddle in Liam's mind too, and I hate when I'm accused of being over protective and "worrying too much."  I decided that surely he will take it SO slowly down that hill that he will get to the bottom safely.  And I wasn't even too worried about the bike ramp at the bottom that kids use, because I could not picture him trying that.  So I set him on his way with cautions to just go VERY slowly down the hill.

I didn't even watch as he left.  I was distracted by Owen's frenetic scootering (and why wasn't Owen wearing a helmet?!) with a different neighbor.  Then I heard the Crash, and looked down to see Liam and bike in a tangled heap in the middle of the road.  He was trying to be brave, but when I ran down to him, he started to cry a high-pitched squealing kind of cry.  His arm was bloody, but nothing was broken.

I felt TERRIBLE.  I should not have let him go!  I should have known it was too much!  Would "over-protective mother" have been worse than crashing and crying in the middle of the street in front of new friends?  So I helped him limp back home, tried to attend to his wounds and his wounded pride, and spent the rest of the day huddled on the couch stoking my own feelings of hating this new street, missing our old neighborhood, pondering how I could live here without ever going outside to face the neighbors again (not because of Liam's crash, but my freak-out behavior after the crash that no doubt labeled me the "scary, over-protective and quite possibly unbalanced new neighbor), angry that youngest son refuses to listen to me during times of duress, worried that Liam would never again ask to play or ride bikes.  You know, all the rational thoughts.  I called Jim to tell him about The Accident, and his response was, "Why did you send him down the hill like that?"  That helped my mood.

HOWEVER.  In hindsight, I have learned a few things:

• Liam, in fact, still seems more interested in riding a bike here than he did in TX.  Go figure.  
• Jim was able to have a bonding time with Liam later by taking him to the bottom of the hill and having him practice going up a few feet and back down, gradually going up further and further until he pretty much mastered the hill.
• Owen still doesn't listen to me in times of duress, but that is a separate issue.  And maybe, just maybe, not worth all the self-flagellation that it caused.
• Pretending that no one saw you freak out and act bizarrely (you know, behavior that may have been more appropriate if, say, your child just stepped on a real land mine or something), and doing your best to act friendly and normal afterward can actually make talking to the neighbors again possible.  (Perhaps they talk about me behind my back, but as long as I don't hear it, I'm OK with that.)
• Bloody wounds can be good fodder for the creative at heart.  One of the funniest things that came out of the whole incident was that I took a picture of Liam's scrape to text to Jim (you know, in order to prove how horrific this accident was and that I was really not over-reacting...even though the picture may not have proven that point...).  So later, Natalie was using a hilarious iPad app called Puppet Pals that lets you make little skits using cartoon people, complete with changeable backgrounds and sound, and adding your own photos.  She narrates some really funny little puppet shows this way.  A few weeks after the accident, she did a puppet show that involved princesses and a queen, and this little oval shaped red spot that they called "the bloody finger."  She had cropped the picture of Liam's bloody wound, and inserted it into her puppet show.  First it was a "bloody finger" and then later the Queen decided it was a hamster, and then at the end it grew and grew until it swallowed them all.  Quite fitting.  Then on Valentine's Day she cropped the bloody wound picture again and turned it into a heart for Daddy.  Love that girl.  

So I guess the moral of the story for me is "Yay, me!  for not being too over-protective, and allowing accidents to happen that can spur both independence and creativity in my children."  Or something like that.  In any case, I am learning to appreciate the hills for their beauty again.

The Birthday Post That Time (Mom) Forgot

I need to get one thing out of the way, here.  Owen turned five at the end of November!  Five, five, five!  He is five!

It really is a blogging travesty that I did not do a birthday post at that time, because Owen himself had a year of build-up, a week of birthday celebration frenzy, and a post-birthday period that is just now waning a bit.  And by post-birthday period, I mean that beginning the day after his birthday, he would approach anyone and everyone and tell them "I'm five now!  My birthday was...(fill in the blank - he is quite good at time/calendar comprehension, so it would start out "one day ago," then "two weeks ago," and now we are in the "a while ago" time frame).  We would be having dinner in a restaurant, and he would spot strangers coming in the door and remark, "I bet they don't know that I'm five..." and we would have to rein him in before he approached them to announce it.

I have no doubt that one day Owen will be researching blog posts as part of therapy to uncover the exact moment(s) that his mother failed him and caused his eventual downfall, and he will discover that I did not blog about his Beloved 5th Birthday!!! until February.  Lord help me.

Maybe it's not a coincidence that Owen would like (usually) to be older than he is.  He wants to be as old as his siblings (and, what do you know, Natalie wants to be his age, because she has declared that "babies get everything" and "everyone says little kids are cute"), he wants to be able to hang with the big boy pack in the neighborhood, he wants to be able to watch scary movies and games.  He is always calculating his age in comparison to everyone else.  I must have at least that in my favor, because he is not shy about telling everyone I am 44.  Older must be better.  Yay, me.

But back to the birthday.  I really felt that I had to give him a real party, with real friends, this year.  He liked Chuck E. Cheese last year, but I could tell he felt cheated a bit when he realized it was family-only and his friends weren't coming.  The boy is such a social animal.  But from a selfish standpoint, I was worried about a huge, long, noisy party sending him into stimulation overdrive and making it impossible for anyone (me) to enjoy.  So I tried to compromise this year, and booked a party at the bouncy inflatables party place, but I set the time for a Tuesday morning, hoping to keep the party small that way.  It worked (for me) because most of his class could not attend.  I honestly thought more of them would be able to attend, since his preschool class was Mon/Wed/Fri.  Luckily, his very Best Friend at school came - otherwise my guilt over intentionally keeping the attendee list small would have been too much.  I think he had a great time.  And the parents who were there all seemed to enjoy the lower volume, shorter time, and less crazy atmosphere.  So hopefully win/win (until Owen is old enough to read about it and realizes I sabotaged his party).

My birthday boy.  He is the only kid I know at the age of almost-but-not-quite-five-but-want-to-talk-about-my-pending-birthday-to-everyone who gets the following comments within a week span from different acquaintances (think realtor, handyman, etc.):  "That boy is going to be President some day," and "Whew.  I think he's going to be a CEO someday" to "What a Salesman that boy will make."  I would be happy to think that even one person had made a comment like that about me anytime in my life, but I doubt it has happened (parents don't count).  But Owen can be captivating that way.  He has a presence, and an awareness of relationships and connections and surroundings.  Also a charm.  The realtor may have opined about Owen being President shortly after Owen looked up at him, cocked his head to the side and declared, "I sure do like your beard.  That's a nice beard!"  on the heels of asking the man about the age and whereabouts of his son, what baseball team said son played on, and various other personal data gathering topics.  Flattery is powerful.  Say what you will about whether the charm is real or fake (and really, I suppose intentions can be less than sincere, but can charm be fake?), the boy is interested in people.  My little social butterfly.  He has opened up my eyes to this different world, being the social caterpillar that I am.  He is social, he is passionate, he is interested in the people and world around him, and he is enthusiastic.  "Enthusiasm" and "zest" are words I always hear from his teachers.  Happy Birthday, my wonderful boy!

 The party was Ninja themed.  Those are Lego Ninja eyes taped to the balloons.

 The Lego Ninja cake made by a neighbor.  Owen loved it SO much that he literally jumped for joy when he saw it and gave her the biggest hug and thanked her over and over, prompting her to invite him to come to her house and play with her son's legos while he was at school (see Salesman reference above).

Sliding - whee!

 Owen and his very best friend (much missed, now that we've moved).  I'm just now noticing his friend is wearing Spiderman shoes.  Ha!  I guess that's why he wants to wear his own Spidey shoes (handed down from a different friend) all the time.  Jim thinks they are the ugliest shoes, and always tries to convince him to wear "normal" ones.

Owen the Pirate, with the telescope and headband that his best friend gave him for a birthday present.  Aaarrrgh!  Love that pirate look.

He does make a handsome five year old.