Otter Facts

"Otters are fun creatures to watch and they are highly intelligent."

—from Top Otter Facts, otter-world.com

My child is in love with otters. Lately Baby Einstein's Neighborhood Animals has been on high rotation around here. Who knows what it is about the otter that is fascinating him so, but he's been taking more photos of the TV screen (*note new image count: 1,067):

And he was so adamant that I spell OTTER for him that he spelled it all by himself after I told him that if he did he could have chocolate ice cream.

Last night after I had tucked him and his brother into bed, I heard his little feet scurry across the room. He had pulled a book off the shelf and had torn out the page on Otter Facts. When I went back up to investigate, well...

... he read it to me. He stumbled over "often" and "webbed" and "waterproof." But he read it to me.

This morning he brought me paper and a crayon and said "Mommy draw otter." I looked at him and said "No. John draw otter." And then, even though it was 6:30 a.m., or perhaps because it was 6:30 a.m., I said, "John…Paint otter?"

"Paint?" he said. And so there we sat — did I mention it was 6:30 a.m.? I handed him a brush and paint and water. He caught my gaze, unsure. I told him he could do it and  a split second later he began. He painted. 

Fact: Otters are pretty darn cute. And intelligent. Not unlike this child.

The Paintbrush

Oh, John. After years of making Mommy spell words for you, of pulling my hand and insisting that I draw pictures for you (in crayon, in pencil, on paper, on the computer, once in the sand), after an eternity of my being Chief Scribe — now you're ready to do it yourself?

The watercolor paints are new — we have not cracked them open since Christmas — so when you brought them to me with a paintbrush and said "Open Blue?" I took in the situation and your earnest face and thought, Well? Let's give it a shot.

Of course I hoped that you would paint yourself but I wasn't optimistic. I mean there's precedent and it usually ends up being me. But still, I got a cup of water and showed you the basics: dip brush in water, mix brush in color, paint on paper. I waited for the inevitable "Mommy paint?" but instead you pushed me away and started coloring in a hot air balloon. Like I was in your way! (I was, I hovered.)

How did I not figure it out sooner?

It's the medium. It's the amount of strength required of your little hands, of your fingers. Painting is fluid and smooth. Your body does not protest or resist or get in your way (like with the crayon or the pencil or even the marker). Painting allows you to execute one smooth movement after another.

It's not (as I sometimes wondered) the repetitive nature of having us draw picture after picture for you. It's that YOU want to be able to draw yourself. And we're as close as you're able to get.

And then it dawns on me that this must be what it's like when you try to talk. I see how you struggle to find words when it's so plain that you want to communicate something — your body doesn't have a paintbrush to help it find expression. And just like when you make Mommy draw for you (i.e., be your hands), you stop in your tracks and cry. Or flap with frustration. I see how frustrating it must be.

What if the answer to both is... painting? So I've decided: No more crayons or markers. We are filling this house with paint and easels and smocks. Let's see what you're trying to say, baby.

The Artist

Well my child? You sure have been busy. We were running out the door and I yelled "John, where is my phone, honey?" because truth be told, you use it more than I do. You stopped in your tracks and disappeared downstairs. When you returned and gave it to me, I was incredibly proud that you listened, followed a direction and brought it to me.

Then I looked at my phone. I scrolled and scrolled…Seven hundred and twenty photos of the TV screen? Seven hundred and twenty?

I'm thrilled you mastered changing the DVDs without breaking them — we did lose a few to your learning curve. I was curious why you kept changing the disks over and over and why you'd fast forward to a scene and pause it on a specific frame. 

When I showed you how to take a photo with the iphone, 720 pictures is not what I envisioned, but wow. I see how you experimented and took photos from afar and then how you focused in on the details that you most love. Beautiful, just like you.

Those Pesky Producers

Sam runs in to the kitchen where I am working on dinner and says, "Mom, it was Jamie Kellner." I am confused, I don't know a Jamie. Or a Kellner.

"It was Jamie Kellner, Mom," he says, pointing at the ipad. "He canceled the Animaniacs in 1998!" I tell him that I still don't know who he is talking about.

"He was an executive, the WB kind," he says matter-of-factly. Sam has made it quite clear that while he loves DVDs (specifically Volumes 1, 2, and 3 from his Aunt JT), what he'd really like is to watch his favorite show on television, you know — like on Boomerang? Or Cartoon Network? They should totally start airing new episodes.

"Why did he cancel them?" I ask, noticing Wikipedia open on the ipad.

"I don't know," he says, "but he was responsible." And that, friends, must be the gospel truth if he read it.

I suggest he write a letter to Mr. Jamie Kellner or to the WB. "Can we do that?" he asks.

"Sure. Why not?" I say, "We could start a 'Bring Back the Animaniacs' campaign."

"Maybe we can write to the others too?" He starts rattling off other names I've never heard of — Rob Paulsen, Jess Harnell, Tress MacNeille (the voices); Steven Spielberg…

I stop him and say, "Steven Spielberg?" He says, "Yep. He's the executive producer."

"Oh. Spielberg. Didn't he do some other stuff?" I ask him.

"I think so, another cartoon maybe?"[smile]

"Mom, can we go to Hollywood? I want to go to Warner Bros. to visit them." And he says Bros. so that it rhymes with 'toes.' I start to explain that Wakko, Yakko and Dot probably do not live at the Warner Bros. studio any longer because they're cartoons, but I don't want to see that smile dim.

"I'd like nothing more," I say instead and give him a hug.

In the early nineties, when Animaniacs was apparently everywhere? I owned a TV, but had no cable. I had never heard of Sam's "zany Warner trio" before he plucked them back into existence off of youtube. Luckily, Santa had heard of them. And she shops on ebay.

National Geographic: Twins

Happy New Year, dear readers. Lately my blog traffic has increased ten-fold; probably because my boys are profiled in the January 2012 issue of National Geographic Magazine. Pretty cool to have visitors from around the globe — stunning, actually.

If you're new here, welcome.

As you can see, I write about my two beautiful,  endlessly complex, twin boys. When we agreed to be interviewed for the NG story, life was a bit more predictable. Leave a crisis to change things a bit — stupid crisis is all me, me, me. It's hard to focus when the fabric of your life is shifting. I must honor that shift, my writing feels contrived when I don't. And yet? I'm in the thick of it.

You see why I haven't written for some time. (And now I see that this is exactly what I should be doing.) I love this quote by Gilda Radner:

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.”  

Yes. Exactly. All in due time.