onvural.net – melih – family man

It’s fascinating how much of the reflection we see in the mirror is a reflection of what others have told us about ourselves. In this case, it’s more of a metaphorical mirror, and also more of a metaphorical reflection.

But it has a bigger impact than the physical one that I can actually look at. And taking control of it is also much harder.

But I think I’ve done it 🙂 And it feels amazing. Obviously Theo helped. You see, he doesn’t have that problem, and somehow he showed me how to approach it the same way he does. By not approaching it all.

And then there are those dance parties, curtains wide open, with two screaming, happy babies. They care a lot. Which friend said what. Whose feelings got hurt by inclusion or exclusion. But man they shake it off fast.

And then a kiss. A hug. A sneak ice cream that mommy doesn’t notice. It just fixes everything.

It’s awesome. And I don’t mind at all if I just copy their approach. It’s much better than the one I was doing.

We were dropping Micky off at work today. Driving up Mission Street, we saw a bunch of Academy of Arts kids walking to school. As they’re all designers of one sort or another they’re always wearing something quirky.

One girl walked across the street wearing bright green Ninja Turtle pajama bottoms.

Micky, as the pajama bottoms walked across the street, said, “Wow, those are hideous.”

And Luka, without missing a beat, said, “You can’t fix stupid, ya know.”

The whole car started dying laughing, and then had another fit of laughs when Amelia asked, “I didn’t hear what Luka said. Why are we laughing?”

Oh man, in those moments… you know they’re definitely related to me.

 
And it already feels so normal to have three. Amelia, Theo, and Luka right to left 🙂 

Amelia and her Leaping Lizard’s class did their end of year event today. They’ve been studying squirrels all semester. Micky even went on a field trip with them to Golden Gate Park to find squirrels and draw them.

The end of year event was an adaptation of the classic children’s book, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle into “The Very Hungry Squirrel” by the Leaping Lizards.

Here’s my little plum making her on-stage debut:

After setting up the treehouse for the kids, I decided to add a hummingbird feeder off of the end to see if we could become friendlier with our hummingbird neighbors.

It’s worked!

They love our yard for its flowers, and they love our yard for its hummingbird feeder. While we’re in the yard playing, they’re buzzing around us almost as if they don’t fear us at all. Today, the main fellow (or maybe the sneaky fellow – I can’t tell the difference yet) buzzed just out of arm’s length away from me, suspended in air as we watched each other.

He then went and chased, got chased, and I lost track of where he went.

The kids started playing pirates in the treehouse, and as they were bringing the treasure into the pirate ship, I said to Amelia, “Look, the hummingbird is back”.

I think her expression takes care of the rest of the story 🙂

The kiddos and I went to work/school without Micky today. She was at home to make sure some deliveries were properly setup (come check out our mack-daddy backyard & deck!!)

And so in our way that we do, we talked most of the car ride about what we saw, words that start with certain letters, and what we were going to do that day. And then when the inevitable lull came in the conversation, we popped on the Bluetooth player, loaded up YouTube, and jammed to:

Uptown Funk – Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars. Amelia says to me, “Daddy, point to me when it’s my turn, and I’ll sing my part” which amounts to singing “Hot Damn” as loud as she can during the chorus (with a few “OOOHHHs” thrown in as well). Luka starts wiggling his butt, and gets his funk on. That boy has hips. That comes from my side of the family. Uptown Funk was my choice.

Then it was Luka’s turn. He decided to go with an instant classic…

Idina Menzel has nothing on us. We can belt this song like there’s no tomorrow. And I’m pretty sure that we don’t get a single lyric correct. That is true Onvural singing in the car magic.

And finally, Amelia went way past her years, and chose one of my all time favorites…

And as she sang, “Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah” we got to school, hopped out, and started our own individual days.

It feels like you’re doing something right when you can have mornings like these

Amelia got us good today. She coughed herself sick, and then had a slight fever. She acted very whiny and tired. And then as soon as we said she didn’t have to go to school she was back to 95% (she is a tiny bit under the weather), and we knew we’d been played. 

Damn those 3.5 year olds are good. 

Check out the play dough sculpture we made: 

Lesson learned. You may have gamed us this time my darling, but just you wait 🙂 

Amelia had the preschool bungalow assembly today. It consisted of each class singing a song, and then the whole preschool singing one song together.

Check out the video here: Amelia’s PS3 assembly song

At Pizza Friday that evening (where we went to Delfina – #mickyfail), I asked Amelia about the performance, and she said,

Well. I was scared, but I kept singing, and everything was ok

and I thought to myself how grown up that analysis sounded.
It was spot on to what happened where in the first song she looked at her older friend Naomi to help her, and then did really wonderfully by herself on the second song.

That was just a lovely moment.

I really need to dig into this whole no yelling thing. But they don’t sleep. And then work is just a bear right now. And we have no nanny. And it just feels as if there have been, and will be coming up, a ton of solo parent days/nights.

But holy smokes that look in her eyes.

And all she asked that I do was not yell at her. To just speak kindly to her. About a cup of milk for God’s sake.

I’ve lost all patience for the world. All restraint to jump from zero to a thousand. But I won’t forget that look in her eyes. And hopefully it will slow me down. Hopefully it will stop me.

Because I don’t want to see it again.