With the return of daylight savings, preparing dinner is a delicate but manic dance around a demanding and danger-prone toddler and the fact that Ford leaves school at dusk, right about the time Chas turns into a werewolf. It’s a crazy juggling act trying to get dinner, or something that resembles dinner, on the table for everyone. It’s even harder trying to get the boys to eat it. But that’s another story. Tonight there’s one thing I want to remark on, because I know Ford is getting older. This cute little thing he’s done all year that has been so fun to watch will, most likely, eventually phase out:

I love the moment when the plates are all on the table, and everyone has a glass and a fork and a knife and a spoon and a napkin, and the burners are turned off and we finally begin to eat. It is at that moment, when we take our first bite or have our first sip of wine (after an obligatory “Cheers!”), that Ford always begins, in upright posture and a tilt to his head,

“So, how was your day, Mommy?”

See? Small talk never sounded so good.

Click on the photograph below and wait eternity for the movie to download, but it was my moment of zen today and I thought it was fun enough to share.

I am his teacher.
From birth, I have helped translate the world to him.
And now, the world is not enough;
he wants me to explain the universe, and death, and subatomic particle behavior,
and my mind is getting tired and feeling ignorant.
I need someone to translate these things for me.

Ford wants to be an illustrator. I interviewed him this morning after he created this elaborate scene:

Stephanie: (holding my invisible microphone) So Ford, the world wants to know more about this young illustrator named Ford. Can we begin our interview with the question, “When did you decide to become an illustrator?”
Ford: (With a mouthful of sandwich) I decided to become an illustrator when I was playing the guitar upstairs with Daddy.
S: I see. Did something or somebody inspire you? What I mean to say is, did you read a book, or watch a television program or watch somebody else illustrating when you decided to become an illustrator, yourself?
F: Yes. I was watching television on the channel they call (pause to chew sandwich) K..L…R….
S: Oh, our local PBS station called “KLRU?”
F: Yes.
S: And what show were you watching?
F: The show with the books, you know…
S: Oh, Reading Rainbow?
F: yes!
S: Well, that’s all the time we have for today, Ford. Thank you for the interview. Now let’s hear the story behind this piece you just finished. Would you do the honors?
F: Sure!

“Next to these mountains right here are some caves, do you see them? People lived in these caves and slept there. And next to the caves, next to the mountains was a huge, huge pool of water. Actually, a huge pool of atoms. And the atoms are so small, they are this small (demonstrates with his fingers, the space between his pointer finger and thumb, pressed together). The atoms bounced together so furiously that they made noise that actually woke up the people sleeping in the caves. So the people went outside the cave, and they found a portal. The went up to the portal, but the portal sucked them inside. Suddenly, suddenly, they found themselves taken by the portal to that place called…New York City. And they looked around and saw what was there. Then they went back into the portal, and the portal took them back home to their caves.”

We had to leave home without finishing the costume. Seventeen papier mache quills left to tack on but I ran out of glue for the glue gun. When we arrived at the lake for the carnival, we stumbled onto the costume judging stage. Around forty children were decked out and fidgeting in their seats. We coaxed Ford onto the stage and he just stood there when the the kids began to parade in a circle around him. But following Ford were many ooh!s and aa!s, and he ultimately won first place! Twitching those creepy claws of his. He is so proud.

Honorable mention goes to Ford as Samurai. Here, searching for treasure in the hay. School Halloween party.

I walk Ford to school every day. School’s been going great.
Today when we rounded the corner of the playground, the boys yelled, “FORD’S HERE! FORD’S HERE!” and stampeded to the fence to wait for him. Closer to where we walked was the little playhouse, and a cute little girl in pink and white, with straight blonde hair heard his name and walked out towards us. Ford lurched forward from the jogger so he could annunciate through the veil of chain-link:

“I’M *NOT* YOUR FRIEND!!!”

She heard this, didn’t flinch, and turned right-side-round back to the playhouse. I watched her tell the other girls what happened. Or that Ford is a little prick and I hope he never calls again. That bastard.

UPDATE:
It has been over a week since I last posted this, but I forgot to mention that, on the following day’s walk to school, Ford picked yellow wildflowers for this sweet little girl. When he arrived at the gate, Ford climbed over his friends to hand-deliver them. Alas, she didn’t want to hold them all afternoon, and Ford wondered why not. Still, they are new friends.

We were shuffling through a lazy night of low-IQ tv with the kids and landed on E! during an episode of The Girls Next Door. Because it was too mature for the children, we kept oggling for a while, long enough to pique Ford’s interest. About ten minutes into the show, Ford ultimately broke down and asked us, in response to the selective digital pixellation,

“So, are we having satellite problems or something?”

Mom places Ford’s lunch before him: several boiled shrimp, some fried rice, and a crimson red crawfish, and Ford looks at his plate with proud disbelief and surprise.

“Is this a crawfish?”

“Yep.”

He sits there, peering into the crawfish’s tiny boiled black eyes, examining it like some Edwardian curiosity.

“It’s so cute!”

“Want to touch it, mommy?”

“Is this his thorax?”

“Yep, it’s in there. I think his abdomen is in there, too. Well, part of it. Anyway, you eat the tail.”

“Like a shrimp?”

“Yep, like a shrimp.”

“Can I eat it?”

“Sure can. Here (I break open the tail, pull out meat, God this looks disgusting, and hand it to Ford)

“Mmm! I like it!”, grinning. “Can I have some more crawfish?”

I look up at my mother with a faint look of “WTF?” and then we both laugh at how cute this really is.

She tells him, “Ford, I’m so impressed with your adventurous palate!”

“I know,” he tells her into his plate quietly.

And while she and I eat and chat and wrestle Chas through the rest of lunch, Ford continued to eat crawfish. Periodically, however, he obliged the technicolor carcasses to duels sur le table, narrating as he went along.

He’s becoming a very interesting narrator.

Like today, when we were reading the book I Be You and You Be Me by Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak, there was a page in the book tenderly illustrating a boy standing on a quaint little hill overlooking a small town, with birds flying overhead and trees in the valley…the words go:

I love the sun

I love a house

I love a river

and a hill where I watch

and a song I heard

and a dream I made

I asked Ford, without reading this charming passage, to narrate this picture himself. Just to compare. Here’s Ford’s rendition:

There was this boy,

on a hill,

and somebody PUSHED him over the hill,

and he crashed onto the town

and shattered in a million pieces

and broke his eyeballs all over the place.

That’s it. That’s what happened. (grinning)

Trust me, he wasn’t thirsty; he’s just discriminating.
Which reminds me: Today at lunch, when mom placed a plate of lentils in front of Ford, he shot me doe eyes from the table and fawned, “Aren’t we having wine with this?” We laughed at what he might be asking for during snacktime at school a few hours later. Mint-infused sippy mojitos? Icy Kool-Aid cosmopolitans?

School. It has been a very good thing. We start the day with breakfast and either go somewhere for the morning or have fun at home when he’s fresh. Then we lunch, read and rest until 3pm, when off we walk to the schoolhouse. When we arrive, he lurches out of the jogger onto the playground, dismissing the teachers and plunging into play. I chit chat with faculty, and leave to run errands with Chas. All the while, Chas is either asleep or restful, engaged and content; it’s a lot of fun having the one-on-one time with him. Three hours pass, we return down to the school, and Ford pours bubbly bucketfuls of enthusiasm in my ears. I give him a juice box, we walk home, eat dinner, clean up and read Harry Potter. It really has been that perfect. The best of both worlds: having him home when I’m at my best, having a break when I’m more tired in the afternoon–he benefits from having playpals and square footage when he’s his most physically atomic, and time with me when he’s most quietly engaged. Way cool.

On Saturday, a trip to the music store to get strings turned into a trip to get 6 more: Ford asked for his own guitar and we flat out bought him one. And do you know what? He’s picked it up like a natural. Here he is playing Mozart’s Minuet in G. Minus the Mozart. And the minuet part. But the G–he’s got that,, and I can’t believe how his fingers are already able to wrap themselves around the fretboard to play a chord. It’s amazing.