It is so frustrating to have me as a mother. I am disorganized and forgetful and overscheduled. Nicolaus handles most of my flaws with pity and kindness, he knows that my flawed brain just doesn’t have nice neat little folders like his own brain does.

But there are some things he doesn’t take as well. Like: I’m an excited interrupter, a sentence finisher. Especially when people pause a lot, I don’t know why but I can’t help it! I fill in the blank, like a guessing game. It’s fun in an annoying why-I-have-few-friends kind of way. The flip side is that you are welcome to jump in and interrupt me back as long as everything is all connected in some way so it’s not like we aren’t listening — we are just inspiring each other and reminding each other of cool and interesting tangents, or are finishing sentences because yes, I know, I understand.

My mom understands this. It’s called a conversation. Nicolaus hates it. He recently made me promise to stop doing that, and I try but lord help me he talks so much it’s like trying to quit drinking when someone offers you a drink every thirty seconds. At some point during the day you are going to slip up and say “Sure!”

SO I finish his sentence and it isn’t the exact thing he was going to say and then he cries and I feel awful because he is so frustrated. It makes him feel so fundamentally misunderstood and not heard and unlikely to get a turn with the submarine toy because I don’t realize how important it is for him to have it right this very exact minute.

The last time I did it he looked down and quietly sobbed and said, “It’s like you just took my words and threw them in the trash and then got out your own paper and made a copy of them but you didn’t even really LOOK at them before you threw them away so the copy was just what you THOUGHT they were supposed to say and it wasn’t right at all.

Man. I apologized but he wouldn’t talk to me again until I promised to LOCK the trash can in my brain so that couldn’t happen again for at least a few minutes. And it didn’t happen again until a brain raccoon or something came along and knocked my brain’s trashcan over and spilled everything out and mixed it all up again and ooh! Were you going to say that you want lunch?

This is just one example of the many things I do each day that displease him. Since he was tiny we have tried working on his negative outlook. We can sometimes get him to concede that the glass is half full but it’s half full with milk and he wanted water and the glass is the one with monsters on it when he really prefers the ceramic cups that daddy made and this glass was probably made in China by child slaves whose parents give them water to drink whenever they want.

But we are working on it. I tell him regularly that I’m not the best mother in the world, but I’m the best mother that he’s got. He’s stuck with me.

Today he wore a skirt, one which he made himself out of a large scrap of paisley fabric. It’s synthetic, from an old dress that I cut up because it was a size Junior Year in College and the only way it will ever fit me again is if I contract a prolonged life-threatening disease, and it’s not like you feel like dressing snazzy when you’re that sick. But the fabric is cute, so I saved it. Nicolaus rescued it from my pile of things to get rid of wrapped it around himself and fastened it with a safety pin.

He thinks it is ridiculous that boys and girls are pressured to like or do certain things only because they are boys or girls. He says it makes no sense to say that boys are not supposed to wear comfortable skirts or carry any sort of lightweight bag with them, and he finds it equally baffling that girls are discouraged from playing with things that are awesome like tanks and airplanes and bombs that blow up bad guys.

On our way out the door I reminded him that people might think he’s a girl, in a cautionary don’t-get-your-feelings-hurt way. This is afterall the kid who was offended when people thought that his sparkly blue cape made him a superhero or his giant butterfly wings made him a BUTTERFLY. Can you believe the ignorance of some people?

So. The skirt. People might think you’re a girl. He said, “I know that. That’s why I’m bringing my toy submarine with the missiles and everything.”

“Ah, so they’ll know you’re a boy?”

“No! That way if someone looks at me and thinks I’m a BOY they will learn oh wow, I guess boys can wear a skirt and have sort of long hair. And if they look over and think I’m a girl then they will start to realize that hey, some girls like to play with toys that I always thought were only for BOYS. And that way people will start to get the idea that there really is no reason why girls can only be a certain way and boys just have to be this other way.”

So he made it his personal mission to educate people a little bit about arbitrary social conventions. Awesome.

There was a great third thing I was going to talk about, and it was going to gracefully tie together the cross dressing back to me being annoying both in general and as a mother but I have to go and annoy my children into putting their shoes on and then I have to harass them into the car and be mean and interrupty all the way to Nicolaus’ art class or we will be late. And being late is one of the main ways I suck as a mom so that would be… well, not ironic but not awesome either.

Susan from Monsters vs Aliens

A ninja

A princess

A double-A battery

The moon

Bolt from the movie Bolt

A real volcano with real lava that will really BURN PEOPLE HAHAHA

A kitty

History was never my thing. In school I pretty much ignored it except for reading about the history of science and inventions which I did on my own during other classes and even if I had paid attention all I would have learned would have been Texas history. I’ve had to piece together my vague understanding of how the world got to this point by asking dumb questions and watching the history channel whenever we are staying at a Motel 6.

But the boys love studying history, and the shift from science into history was so gradual and logical that they didn’t even notice it. Everything fits.

So! I need a little help, if you are someone with a good general grasp of how the world developed please tell me what you think.

We moved from the first humans to the migratory ice age people to the first known cities. Ancient civilizations are where things are at right now — we did mesopotamia, Egypt and are just now starting China. Next week we’ll do Indus and then… well, where should we go next?

We are headed generally toward the Greek and Romans, which will be comfortable ground since Nicolaus spent most of age five being a Roman and spent this past summer urging me to read more about Greek gods to him. But before that… and heck, during all of that there was a lot going on in the world. What about the Americas? And Japan? What was going on in tribal cultures that weren’t forming big cities? And the rest of Asia, Europe, the middle east and when and how do I talk about the Jewish people and when were there Vikings again? aaaaaaaagh it is too overwhelming. How can I present a balanced and reasonable picture of the world’s pre-scientific thinking societies?

I know they’re little kids and it shouldn’t matter too much but I need for everything to hang together in a way that forms a clear, cohesive story. That’s sort of the whole idea here, you know? Everything is based on context – and the trouble here is that I don’t know which things nest inside of which other things. Make sense? Help, please.

I have to catch up or I will die. Because new days keep happening! And because we just shipped off the second huge holiday order and I feel ahhh so relieved and the boys are building a fort happily together which means I have 1-60 minutes before they start fighting. I sort of want to sweep the floors and I sort of want a nap or a shower (must figure out how to safely combine those two) but no really what I really want to do? Is this.

Week 7 was all about mammals, which led quite naturally into a week about the evolution of humans. Still using the mystery box concept, we talked a lot about how much of this can’t be known for sure because as we learned during dinosaur week fossils are danged hard to make and pretty unlikely to be found. And even when we find them, you still have to do a lot of speculating as you put the whole puzzle together.

Anyhow. We went back to our big bucket of plastic mammals. How are we different from say, these horses? How are we different than elephants? Etc.

And specifically, how are we different from other primates? What can chimpanzees do that we can’t do? What can we do that they can’t?

Based on what we learned about mammals, what would a chimpanzee look like if it adapted for millions of years to live in the arctic? What about the desert? The mountains? Shallow lakes? Etc.
They drew pictures of what they thought apes would look like under all different rules.

I should admit here that Kevin and I are weirdly fond of the aquatic ape idea. We presented it as a possibility, and spent some time pretending to be early apes living on the peaceful beach scavenging for shellfish and things to eat. We listened to music and sounds of waves crashing and played on our sand-colored rug.

As the week went on we did more compare/contrast with our modern ape cousins. What would a gorilla or a chimp do with an iphone? The boys feel that an ape would absolutely figure out how to play games on an iphone or a computer. Then we thought about how that might be different than, say, how a dog or a deer or a cat might play with an iphone. There is something intangible there, and whatever that intangible thing IS is maybe intelligence? Awareness? Abstract thought? I don’t know, honestly. But it’s important.

I printed out a bunch of pictures of early humans and taped them to cardstock. These work well for all kinds of activities. I had the boys put the pictures in chronological order, tell little stories with them, and just play with them acting out things we’d read about.

The boys cut tools and tried using sticks and rocks to do different things. We finished the week talking about the shift from early protohumans to more modern people. I wanted them to understand what a big deal fire was, so we went to the store and gathered foods to eat raw. For the whole day we couldn’t have anything that required cooking.

At first they were all over the concept. They liked hunting and gathering very much. And preparing meals was fun too. They picked out tons of vegetables, nuts, seeds, fruits, and raw honey.

The first meal went well, but by dinner Nicolaus was in tears because he couldn’t have any bread. I finally relented after dinner and let him make a piece of toast. He gobbled it down, promising me that he totally understood now why it was such a big deal for humans to discover how to cook their food. Graham meanwhile happily munched on raw broccoli and raw everything and didn’t much see what the big deal about fire was.

We drew together on a globe the path of human migration that we see as the weather changed. As the weather became colder, how did we adapt? We made clothing. This is the only thing we were able to figure out that is really uniquely human. Once we had clothes, we started making art. Jewelry. More complicated tools.

Nicolaus LOVED making tools. He’d scrounge around outside looking for the perfect rocks to use — one soft and flaky to become the tool and one hard and sized to fit in his hand so he could use it as a hammer. If we hadn’t interrupted him for food and bathing and stuff, he’d still be standing at his workshop table hammering and hammering.

As week 9 dawned, the ice age moved in. Humans had to adapt and had to migrate more quickly to find food. We drew together on a globe the path of human migration that we see as the weather changed. As the weather became colder, how did we adapt? Humans made clothing. This is the only thing we were able to figure out that is really uniquely human.

Kevin showed the boys how to hammer copper into shapes, and brought home some awesome books about early human life.

Somewhere in there, we studied the cave paintings of Lascaux. I found an interactive flash site that tours the cave and gives tons of information about each section. Afterwards I thought it would be fun to try making our own cave drawings, but this activity didn’t go well. Nicolaus cut a reverse drawing into a block of foam, showing the room of the cats.

Graham drew a couple of little patterns, became annoyed with the project and decided instead that he wanted to draw a map of the cave. I started to pressure him to join us in what we were doing, then remembered that he is barely four and oh my god Tiffany get a grip.

I’m remembering all this as best as possible. It ain’t easy, this was a month ago now. But the basic idea we wanted them to gather is that we are animals and like every living thing, we evolved according to the rules of our environment. They learned that I think to some extent, and they also learned that grains of wheat are way harder to grind up than you’d ever think. We are guessing that many early humans threw tantrums because their first tries at making tools to pulverize the grains? Like totally did not work.

This all sprawled out over three weeks, mostly because I was so sick. We found a flash site all about the La Brea tar pits, watched the movie Ice Age a half-dozen times, and pretended to be the people in that movie. We read about freaky ice age creatures and for two terrifying weeks my kids wanted me to make them saber-toothed tiger costumes for Halloween. Thankfully they have returned to their much simpler ninja idea.

We spent the full day of getting ready for the art show. Getting ready included:
Printing Nicolaus’ photos
Framing everything
Going to meet my sister in law Alisha to get her artwork
Going to a fabric/craft store for black felt table covers and a few other things
Figuring out what I was going to wear
Going to the place
Setting everything up
Finding out it was supposed to be a costume party
Dropping Roux off at my friend’s house so the dogs could play and have fun since they weren’t getting much attention from us today
Going home to shower and briefly considering figuring out some sort of costume
Giving up on dressing up as anything other than me
Negotiating simple costumes for the boys
Pulling everything together somehow in time
Feeding them a lame dinner
Finding their shoes
Putting on makeup (on myself, I mean)
Heading out with boys to the show
Meeting up with Alisha

This list is only important if you are thinking about the level of anticipation that would build in the brain of a young child by the end of a day like that. It would be like giving a kid tickets to the circus but oh! The circus is tonight! We forgot to capture and train the wild squirrels to do handstands for the center ring intermission show. That makes a lot to do and a lot of running around getting squirrel costumes and rabies shots and everything, and by the time you are actually there your kids will be nearly inside out from the excitement.

Then it was time to go to a grown up art opening.

Graham is barely four and hates crowds and had therefore opted to dress as a parrot wearing a large explorer’s hat. As we walked in the door, people oooohed over the cuteness of his bird costume. He scowled. “That’s not a costume. I really AM a bird and this is my explorer costume.”

And so we walked into the art show and began an intense three hours of navigating crowds, talking to strangers, eating salty snacks and then being unable to find drinks, looking at all of the artwork, being given candy, not touching any of the artwork, finding drinks that contained either alcohol or caffeine, opting (stupidly) to give my kids the ones with caffeine, and flapping our wings and/or doing ninja moves without hitting anyone. And! Ah ha! Talking to people about our own work.

Normally I am a nervous, awkward freak at these things but this one was pretty comfortable. People were very friendly, received my artwork with lots of interest and more importantly they were nice to my kids. There weren’t many other kids there, so it was really cool to me that the hip art-going, seemingly child-free crowd not only tolerated kids but actually talked to them as though their art was every bit as legitimate as anyone else’s.

The highlight for Nicolaus was meeting a sculptor who was a fellow ninja. They compared weapons and ninja moves and oh my god, for a six year old who has never heard of GI Joe, an adult dressed as Snake Eyes is literally the literal actual coolest thing he has ever seen. Literally.

But for ME the highlight was watching him learn how to talk to people about his own work. At first when people would say “I like your pictures, those are really great.” he would look away shyly and say, “Okay.”

I prompted him to start telling people thank you when they said nice things about his photos. So the next time someone complimented him, he avoided eye contact but thanked them. Honestly, in all the commotion of the party I somehow missed the transition between shy six year old and enthusiastic self-promoter. Maybe someone gave him some cocaine while I was coralling the parrot/explorer? Because by the end of the evening he was telling anyone who asked the whole story of how he saw these pins and how he set them up, arranged them on the magnet, used his mother’s camera, how some came out blurry but that’s okay because it’s not really a picture of PINS, it’s supposed to look more like a solar system of all different colors and… man. People go to art school for years and never learn to talk about their work with that much clarity and confidence.

Maybe you had to be there, but this is the picture where I tried to grab a tiny bit of the coolness. You can’t see, but he was talking to a man who owns a gallery in town. The guy gave me his card and told Nicolaus to come by if he ever wanted to show his work. As he turned to leave, he turned to me and said, “I’m serious. This kid is something else. If there’s anything I can do to encourage his… this, you let me know.”

Over and over, people stopped him to ask about his pictures, what are they pictures of? How did he come up with this idea? How did he do it? And even at eleven oclock at night as the crowd was thinning and Graham had long tossed his explorer hat on the floor and melted into a mass of giggly feathers, high on his own tiredness, Nicolaus patiently conversed with every person who asked. He also talked to people about my work, his aunt’s work, and what he thought about all of the other art in the show.

But that wasn’t the part that made my heart break/bust/burst. We were hiding out in a hallway eating some snacks when these two ladies found us and told us they wanted to buy the kids’ artwork. They just had to run to the car and get their purses, so we agreed to meet them in front of the art work. The boys jumped up and down. Someone! Is Buying! Our! Art! Someone! Is! BUYING IT!!

We gathered ourselves up and made our way through the crowd back to the wall. It took the ladies a little while to find us again and in the meantime the boys jumped and flapped because whennn! Are! They! Coming back!! When mama? Whenwhenwhenwhennnnnnnnn?

The ladies finally came back. The first lady counted out $12.00. Nicolaus had confidently priced his pieces at $12 each. I’d encouraged him to go higher… those frames ain’t cheap ya know… but he told me that if you make your stuff cost LESS you will actually sell MORE and all those less amounts will add up to a pretty big amount. Given the way pricier art was(n’t) selling at the show I would say that he is on to something.

She gave him cash and showed him which one she wanted. We handed her the print. He beamed. Here he is standing next to her.

Then it was Graham’s turn. As an artist who feels it is important not to undervalue his work, he did not price his at twelve dollars. His paintings were $13.00.

But as the lady started counting out thirteen dollars, Graham crumpled. He shoved his head against my leg and said, “No.”

It took me a minute to get what he was saying, “No, I don’t want to talk to the lady.”

“Oh! Do you want me to do it for you?”

“NO. I mean I do NOT WANT TO SELL my painting.”

Ohhhh! Oh oh! “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” he started crying, “I need to keep it.”

I told her I’m sorry, but it’s not for sale afterall. She told him she completely understood, and turned to buy another of Nicolaus’ photos instead.

He shook his head. He was holding out the money, handing it back to his patron. “Oh no, sweetie, that money is yours!”

He couldn’t talk without crying, so instead he shook his head and moved to take the framed photo out of her hands. She understood. “Ohhhhhhh! But I really want it. You don’t want to sell it?”

Nicolaus shook his head and gave the money back.

I started to pressure him. He had promised her afterall that she could have it, and it’s a print. But wait — what am I doing? There are worse things than forming an emotional attachment to a work of art. Once he had it back in his arms, he was relieved enough that he could talk again. She asked him to please let her know if he changed his mind, and he promised that maybe later prints of it would be for sale but but see, this was the first print so it’s really more special.

After that, several more people wanted to buy their work but we told them sorry, no, it isn’t for sale.

When we left the party it was after 11:00. We were all tired and buzzed from the excitement of the night. I ended up sticking Graham in an umbrella stroller so he would stop flapping and spinning and shedding feathers everywhere.

On our way out, I asked Nicolaus “So? What did you think of your first art show?”

He said, “It was fun! But I didn’t sell anything. And art shows? Are STRESSFUL.”

That sums it up for almost every artist there I think.

Graham and Nicolaus were happy to have their artwork back at home, safe from the clutches of the buying public. The next morning they were all abuzz over breakfast about the people they met and things they saw. Nicolaus said that next time he needs to make more copies of his stuff before he tries to sell it.

Graham told us, “I am NEVER going to sell any of my artwork. EVER.”

“That’s fine,” I told him. “You don’t have to.”

“Yeah. I am never going to sell any of my work and if somebody ever accidentally buys my artwork? On accident? I will PUNCH THAT PERSON.” Which will be absolute PR gold in the hands of his agent.