A good story

Reading with Theo is quite entertaining. Every story is played out in his little body. When good things happen, he laughs uproariously. When it gets tense he starts fidgeting madly, picking at this fingernails or even toenails, wringing his hands, gasping. And when something bad happens his little face crumbles and he cries out. Watching his face is amazing- he draws his lips in, his mouth becoming a cave, his eyes sparkle with tears, and he seems to lose two inches of height, even though he is usually lying down in bed while we read. Tonight, we were getting some foreshadowing that in the upcoming third book of the Unicorn Chronicles the evil Hunters might find their way into Luster and do damage to the good Unicorns. Theo crumbled. Started gasping. It just so happened that Eli happened into the room in that second, having finished book number 365 of the day and was heading toward the ladder and up to his bunk. He heard me trying to explain to Theo that every good story needed some kind of tension, that all good all the time was boring. Eli, without a moment's hesitation says, "....and the unicorns lived in a valley of daisies. They spent their days making flower garlands and drinking fruit cordials....the end. I hope you liked our story brought to you from Pretty Pony Productions." I guffawed at the mention of cordials. How DOES he come up with these words? It did the trick and brought Theo out of his near hysteria. Then Eli climbed up into the bunk and started whispering more of his conflict-free tale ".....hello my dear Mrs. Lightfoot, would you like some of my sparkling pear cordial, it has been fermenting for twelve years...." Man, that kid can use words in a way that boggles my mind. I'm off to the hallway to see if I can catch more of his tale. Who says that conflict free is boring? 12 year old cordials? Things are about to get exciting.

Mother's day love

Jon took the boys off into the woods and snapped some lovely pictures without my knowing. They then put a bunch of the new pictures in frames that were already around the house. It only took me a day to notice. Here are a few of the outtakes- in all their glory:

With a Rebel Yell

Last night we were doing a little youtube trolling and somehow landed on some old Billy Idol videos. Don't ask how we got there- it was a long and windy road- and thoroughly enjoyable. Theo took one look at Billy scowling his way through 'Dancing With Myself" and proclaimed "I could look like that!!" It is true that his smile is definitely lopsided and tends to a left sided smirk- and when he is telling himself a good tale it is always told out of only one side- his lips skewed and stretched over to the left. He watched with saucer eyes, something calling to him. We were finally able to pry him away and get him in the bath. At first he was protesting, but then found a pair of goggles and soon enough he was telling himself a tale, half out/half under water. Jon and I moved on to better videos. Erasure. Men at Work. After a while we sensed a presence watching over our shoulders and we turned to find this:

He had stuck his hair up with soap- after getting out of the tub- and was trying with all his might to scowl. He does it better when he is not trying. But try he did- hoisting himself up on the sink to check out his 'smirk' early and often. Thankfully he seems to have forgotten this overnight, but he has claimed that it is what he wants to be next Halloween. Billy Idol. He is already thinking about enlisting his grandma Sherry to construct the artfully ripped up leather vest. Worn over a bare chest. Here's hoping next Oct. 31 is a warm one.

The Deep

Theo is 'the deep' I'm talking about. The kid has a current that runs deep and when he's in it, he churns out some pearls of wisdom. There have been several lately, but I haven't taken the time to capture them and write them down, so they're gone. But atleast I heard them as they bubbled out of him and was wiser for it, for the moment anyway. Today while I was volunteering at his school my task was to put together the book of poetry for the first grade class poetry recital next week. The poems were all wonderful-many of them followed a formula of sorts- starting with a noun and loving that noun and then describing the different kinds of that noun- Planets, I love planets, red planets, blue planets..... Others started off with "I wonder"- one child's poem that wondered when his dad was going to come home from war made me put my hand on my heart and blink for a while. Then I got to Theo's- completely different from the others. Here it is as he just recited it to me:
The Deep
The deep's blackness
Settles on fish
A narwhal jumps
and then the blackness swallows it
The deep's blackness
Settles on fish

I love it. And here's a little piece from a short story type thing he typed up himself the other day. It was about five times the length of the piece below- all typed with one little finger that would type one letter, then wiggle the loose front tooth, then type a letter, then wiggle. How he kept the narrative going at that pace I will never know, but I like the story:
You decide to go in the cave. The cave is dark. But you can see a little bit. You hear a eerie sound. The entrance is blocked so you have to go deeper in the cave. You go deeper and deeper. Until you see light. You wonder if you turned around. To find out you follow the light, finally you reach the source. It is the world change. Clouds swirl and dip. “wow’’.

Swab story, part two

I forgot to mention that a month ago, when Theo was in for the original Strep swab-ation, it was a nurse who tried to get a sample from the back of old Theo's throat. Jon's report makes it sound like it was fairly awful. So in the middle of the doctor's battle to get the swabs in this time, I kept saying, "Theo, this guy is a professional, he knows what he's doing, let him do it." My child showed no signs of hearing any of my reasoning- just kept the mouth clamped, the pleading eyes on me.
But the next day, when the phone remained silent and no one called to say that the 24 hour test had come back positive, Theo walked by and said, "You know, they're not calling today because that guy was a professional, he knew what he was doing and he got it right the first time." Apparently he did hear me.
So no strep. And if it was the old swine-y it proved to be very mild indeed. He was back up and running by noon on Saturday.

The dreaded swab

Yesterday I picked the guys up from the corner after school. When Theo saw me standing there, on a Thursday- Rebecca's day, his face fell. "Where's Rebecca????" Oh, I had forgotten to tell him that she was not available, and that I had rearranged my schedule at work and then slunk out the back door unnoticed so that I could be home to get them. This did not go over as the heroic tale of sacrifice that it was intended to be. The afternoon and evening deteriorated at a rapid pace. Eli was fine. He accepted me as the substitute caregiver with a touch of disappointment but quickly buried himself in a book. But Theo. He pouted, then fell into a fit of 'victim-tude' as I have come to see it. The world was falling down around him and he whined out a series of affronts that have been his to bare. Often he crumpled into tears, his face just falling- not rage, just complete sorrow. Somewhere in the back of my brain I was thinking, this is not going to end well- this is not the real Theo- something is wrong. But we eventually made it through the evening, and most of the night.
At 5:30 Theo awoke coughing and sniffling, yelling out, "I can't breathe! I am so full of snot!" I got him some kleenex and lay down next to him, accepting his laden kleenexes one after the other for quite a long time. He finally drifted off. In the real morning he awoke and said he was fine, but was still sniffling. Eli had recently been in this same state and a steady dose of Claritan was working wonders on him. So we dosed Theo up. And he smiled- a clingy, feverish smile. I tried to ignore it, thinking allergies. Not swine flu. Allergies. Not swine flu. But allergies don't cause a 102 fever. After talking to the nurse, it was decided that he should come in to see if the strep he had one month ago had reappeared in his trembly little body.
"I am not being swabbed. Not being swabbed. Not swabbed." This was his mantra as he rather obediently put on his shoes and jacket and headed for the car. He had been swabbed the month before and the memory lingered. As we drove north I kept vacillating between relief that there was now a reason attached to Theo's behavior the previous day -he had no resources because a fever had been cooking up inside him- and a little inkling of fear. The fear had several fonts. Written large in this fear was the upcoming swab. Jon got to witness the last one and he still shudders when he retells the story of the fight with the nurse. And in little teeny tiny letters my fear was spelled out as swine flu. How could I not be thinking it? The media was clobbering us with tales- inducing enough panic in me that I put myself on a strict media diet two days ago. But the symptom checklist had filtered through my ban. Fever- check. Runny nose- check. Headache- check. But what are those NOT symptoms for? North we drove- Theo chanting the quiet mantra 'Not getting swabbed." And me sternly telling myself to back away from the cliff. Do not turn on the radio.
In the exam room he was tense and his lips were tight until the nurse said she wasn't going to swab unless the doctor ordered. The relief travelled through his whole body. He got looser, lighter. Then the doctor appeared. Ordered the swab. Theo was sitting up on the bench. He went rigid, raised one clenched fist in front of his mouth and turned his steely green eyes on me. No words. No sound. But no opening of that mouth. I have never seen will quite so defined in someone's eyes. The doctor caught it too, and stopped on his way out to get the nurse. He could tell that this might be a patient who needed the doctor. Theo never said a word in the battle that insued. But the battle was epic. In the end I had his hands pinned and his head tilted back, the doctor forced his mouth open and then went wild with the swabs. Once again Theo's face crumpled and the silent tears rolled. Then he bit down on the swab- realizing that he could halt its awful probbing this way. The doctor begged for their release and finally Theo relented. The doctor realized he had a sample and quickly left the room. Theo's little soaked body melted into mine. He looked up into my eyes and while I cringed, waiting for the attack (why hadn't I protected him? Why had I HELPED the doctor pin him so that the swabs could attack??) he said, "Man, did you see those crumbs on the doctor's tongue?? There were these huge crumbs right in the middle." He was over it. And the test results: negative. Shoot.