fear

I've been meaning to write this post for a few weeks- I've been thinking a lot about fear and it's impact on Odin for a little while now. 

As soon as the weather grew a little warmer this spring, the carpenter bees began to make their appearance. I love our honeybees but for some reason the carpenter bee terrifies me. They're big and loud and curious and fearless. They hover inches from your head to say hello and to see what you are and it scares me. I find myself ducking back into the house and covering the back of my neck and squealing like a little girl. It's irrational, I feel, for me to be afraid of these little bugs. I've tried and tried not to be afraid but I found myself cowering whenever we were outside for fear one would land on me. 

A friend came over and as I expressed my fear for these little creatures, she admitted that she used to be afraid of them too. Her fear created a fear in her older daughter. She noticed this and didn't want her younger child to be afraid too, so she just chose not to be scared. This made me realize that I really need to toughen up, especially around Odin! I love my mom, but she's afraid (sorry mom, but it's true!!) of a lot, almost everything actually. I always tell her she's like the paranoid aunt from A Series of Unfortunate Events (the movie, I've never read the books). One of her fears is riding roller coasters, which is unfortunate because she lives in Florida. Florida has a ton of amusement parks and I grew up terrified of roller coasters. I remember many field trips where I sat aside, terrified to try one, while my friends went on and had a great time. When I was in seventh grade, my friends convinced me to go on Kumba at Busch Gardens. They lied (a lot) to get me to agree to go. They told me it didn't go upside down at all and that it was one of the slowest roller coasters at the park. Lies! That ride goes 60 mph and goes upside down 7 times (including a 114 ft tall vertical loop). My eyes were closed the entire time and the snapshot from the ride of me was hilarious, but upon exiting my immediate response was, "let's do that again!" And we did. A few times.

I don't really feel like I have many fears but the few that I do have I really think are entirely irrational. I really don't want Odin to grow up with fears that will impact his sense of adventure and wanderlust. I'm going to work on my fears so that he doesn't have to work on his.

goodbye friends

It was so nice to have friends visit for the weekend. I'm going to miss them. We're excited to visit when we travel this winter (hear that, Pilar?!)! Odin loves having company so I know he'll miss them too. He thoroughly enjoyed visiting the docks though and watching the boat leave. He pointed at every moving boat and seagull that passed his view. 

chilly beach drinking

We made the mistake of going to Cisco Brewers on Figawi Sunday. Figawi derives from the question, "Where the f--- are we? (Where the figawi?)." It's an annual sailboat race between Hyannis and Nantucket Island on Memorial Day weekend. It's been around for years and floods our little island with thousands of visitors for the weekend. Lots of drinking involved, so obviously the brewery was packed. Zak's friend Pilar (who he met while traveling across the country via hitch-hiking, freight train hopping, and a lot of walking) and his friend Juan were in town for the weekend visiting our island for the first time. Whenever we have a guest, the brewery is the spot to take them. Unless it's Figawi weekend. After standing in an unusually long line, we bought our beers (the tastiest I've ever had) and a couple growlers to bring to the beach. It was nice to escape the sea of polos, whale-print pants, neon wayfarers, and drunk people. The beach was much more soothing and although it was a little chilly, we could actually hear each other talk. Odin loves the company of lots of friends and he loved being surrounded by all of us. He did spend his first year as the only child in a house with six adults. Every plane and seagull that passed overhead earned a little pointed finger and a smile from our little man. 

Just as the question, "should we move on to someplace else?" surfaced, the sky opened up and the rain that had been drenching our island all weekend continued its work. We all ran to the car and came back home to finish our growlers and have some dinner.

Spring Awakening show

The show was a success! I sold all three pieces during the three hours of the opening night. And we had time to be silly afterwards before going out for a celebratory drink. Odin's so awesome at these sorts of events. He just wants to visit with everyone and never cries. Even afterwards when we stayed out a little later than bedtime, he thoroughly enjoyed drinking his water from one of the spoons at the restaurant. 

rainy days

Rainy day activities. Odin refused to come inside for the longest time even though it was pouring rain. I think he may have a little bit of a cold now because of it, I'm such a bad mumma! When I finally did convince him to come inside we pulled out the craft paints just to see how they would do. We've never painted before and although Paloma was only interested in taste testing the paints, Odin loved smearing it all over the paper! As an artist mama, I was ridiculously excited and there will be plenty more painting adventures to come. I am on the hunt for some natural (maybe edible) finger paint recipes. I think we may try spices next, I would imagine turmeric and a little bit of water would work beautifully and be a magnificent color.