carter had a staph infection on his foot. we think it was an infected blister. he woke up yesterday complaining about his foot. i thought his leg was asleep. a half hour later he was still complaining, and since he rarely complains like that, i took a look. there was a rather large whitish, raised circle on the ball of his foot, and it was very tender. i could not tell if it was a blister, a wart, or an infected splinter or other object. but pretty quickly it got redder around the outside and larger, so as soon as the doctor's office was open, i called. at 10 am, i looked again, and it was disgusting, and really astounding at how rapidly it had progressed.

by noon, at the doctor's office, he was in tears, curled up in my lap. that is really not normal for him. the nurse and the doctor looked at it and both said "eeeww." and then they both asked me how i could have possibly resisted the urge to pop it. i admitted to desperately wanting to open it, but that i really did not want to risk doing so, in the event that 10,000 baby spiders crawled out or something (it was that big and gross looking). i was really really really afraid that it was MRSA (resistant staph), and the doctor knew this and told me that she had had plenty of kids with MRSA who were just fine.

the doctor drained it, cultured it, and prescribed major antibiotics. today she told us it was almost certainly staph, and tomorrow we will know if it was MRSA. there is nothing like a brush with a major bacterium to unsettle you.

so, bandaged foot and all, he graduated from pk3 today. as expected, this prompted a lot of reflection on the past year, and it really is amazing how much he has grown up. he was still nearly a toddler then, and is a kid now. three was a weird year for me as a mom. it is hard to explain. with ava, even though she is so so so different from me, she is still a girl, and she identifies with me as such (despite her utter disappointment in me when i put on the same old yoga pants and grey t-shirt one morning: "mo-om, why do you always have to wear that?"), and i identified with her. so, as she has grown up and away from me into her own person, there has been a struggle to untangle her from me. in other words, she wants to be unique and independent, but she is so fundamentally similar to be just by virtue of being a girl that she struggles to carve out her own identity--and if she goes too far in doing that she gets frightened and snaps back to me like she is wrapped in a rubber band. it is very tangled and complicated with her. her identity and my nurturing are too mixed up together. i say that like it is a problem, but when i say too mixed up, i just mean too mixed up for this to be an easy process. it is what it is. there are things that are easy with her, and things that are not, just like with anyone.

however, with carter, it is the absolute opposite. he is a boy and very much a boy at that. he just comes with an entire fundamental identity that is very different from me and he knows it and he does not really care that he and i are not connected in that way. his connection to me is very clear--i nurture him. so, he has no problem separating his existence as a person from his need to be snuggled and comforted and taken care of. when that need is met, he pops up and runs off to go be the little guy he likes to be. i am not sure this makes sense at all, but from my point of view it was a weird realization that i might not have to go through years of separation anxiety with him. granted, he still has some days when he does not want me to go, but generally he does not behave like i am tearing out half of his personna when i leave.

however, it has taken some adjustment on my part as i watch him connect with the men in his life in a way that i simply cannot grasp. i can certainly identify the things that interest him, and some of them even interest me (dinosaurs, space), and willingly learn about those things that do not interest me (vehicles, superheroes), but this year in particular saw the evolution of a very different way of thinking about these interests. to explain that would take perhaps a whole book, but suffice it to say that it was not a way that i immediately understood. there was a lot of interest in things that conferred power, and a lot of interest in good guys and bad guys, and there was a lot of interest in building structures out of blocks and running through the house holding a plane or helicopter aloft and making engine noises, and basically sorting out how the world works. now, i will not state that this is definitely gender based, but interestingly it was a means for him to connect with other males.

now, for a part of this year--pretty much in the beginning--i was the one with the separation anxiety, as i watched him apparently growing away from me, becoming more foreign to me. i could see that i simply was not as fun or exciting or interesting as some other male individuals in his life were, and i was left sort of bummed out. of course, every evening he would curl up with me, and i filled a need that was still rather acute, but i knew that this would eventually end, and i definitely did not want to end up not being able to relate at all.

as the year has drawn to a close, this as ever so subtly changed. he is still interested in a lot of things that i would not normally even notice (again, vehicles), but his way of thinking has changed. he has suddenly become more abstract in his analysis of the world, considering things more deeply, and wants to have conversations about them. for example, when i said "god is everywhere" (i refrained from launching into a full-scale physics lesson about the nature of energy and the connection between god and energy as i see it), he spent about a week asking me if god was in the various things he saw in his environment--the lake, his sneaker, the bricks, dogs, his bike, the rain, trees, fire hydrants, mailboxes...the last one giving me fits of giggles that were very hard to explain, but isn't it funny to think of god arriving in your mailbox? open it up and out pops the divine.

he has always been interested in god, existence, etc., but his thinking has taken on a new complexity. also, he tends to be a kid that really trys to decipher everything. the meaning of things, the way everything fits together--and this he and i can connect on.

the way i look at it, 3 was the year that he pulled away from me, and then returned as a kid that might be unique and different from me on the surface, but still a person that i can understand and who can understand me without confusing that for being the same person. he is not tangled up with me. i will never be able to play good guys/bad guys with true enthusiasm, and i will never drive a race car, or a big digger, but i have a certain weath of knowledge due to my greater number of years on the planet, and he likes to tap that. that is pretty cool. and he still snuggles up with me.

kindergarten graduation is tomorrow. i cannot believe that we have made it through the year. it was a very very difficult year for her in many many ways. i am not sure how valuable her school experience actually was. there is a lot that she loved, and a lot that she is proud of, and she obviously learns very well from other adults, but all that came at the expense of a lot of her happiness, confidence, and frankly, health. and i am not sure how much the experience exacerbated the above-mentioned tangled-ness with me. i love school, i am a total nerd, but in hindsight i think that if she had not gone through these past 3 years she might have untangled herself a lot more slowly and in a way that was not too scary to her. her school experience was very rewarding in many ways, as i said, but if i had known how it would impact her i probably would have done it differently. i am not sure i am thrilled with where we are now, and i am not sure if the summer is enough time to remedy some of the snarls we have found ourselves in. she is just not like most kids. for example, we had a very toned down stranger danger discussion because she wanted to use the beach bathroom by herself. i did not go into any details, but made the point that there are some people that are not nice and i don't want her alone with them. her reaction? absolute FURY with me. i mean she was livid. clearly it was absurd and a manifestation of her fear, but wow. i let it go. but that sums her up--she is so incredibly intense that sometimes she gets angry at me for upping the intensity. i don't know, it is very hard to figure out.

(speaking of fear, the other day carter and i read "are you my mother?"at the doctor's office, and when i finished it he declared that it was a very scary book. frankly, i have to agree with him. i never understood why that little bird was so cheerful as he fell 30 feet then went on a search for his missing mother).

at any rate, we'll see where the summer leads us. right now, she is pretty proud of herself and looking forward to first grade.

i wonder what anna is going to be like.