The Boy

Yesterday was again warm and beautiful-- we've had the loveliest November-- and Henry again spent most of it outdoors.  He has a new fort, which has a slanted wooden roof, brick walls, a seat (overturned sand pail), trash can (old baking tin), a bowl for his food (he likes to take his dried fruits and nuts out there to eat), games, and a pile of rubber bands for shooting.  And a gun rack, of course!  Jokes about "Lord of the Flies" come easily, but seriously, he is busy creating his own, self-sufficient world out in nature.  


A year ago I was all upset with his talk about superheroes and guns, but I've come to a new appreciation of the essential, primal boy-ness of Henry, and I want to protect and celebrate it.  When he's loud and fast and raucous around my friends who are parents of quiet, studious boys-- much less of girls wearing princess dresses-- I am often a little embarrassed and try to shush him.  There is something fundamentally anti-social, I think, about boyness.  He does need to learn how to behave in and navigate institutions in order to get along in the world.  But, as my friend Scott (parent of a boy) said last night, there is another world as well, the world of nature and danger and tough moral choices and tests of mettle, and he is also learning to thrive in that world.  Guns and shooting and superheroes are very, very important to him, and I realized that I was dishonoring something fundamental in him when I was dismissing those as unworthy concerns.  He is consumed with understanding and mastering powerful forces, and that's just what he should be doing to become a responsible, ethical man of integrity.  


So yes, I think we will be buying him the Nerf guns for Christmas, and the set of army men.  (On Thanksgiving, when asked what he was thankful for, he said "My war vehicles."  Friend Scott quipped, "You and General McChrystal!")  Shooting and war is here in the world, and I can't pretend it isn't.  But I can try to let a boy grow himself into a man who knows how to use powerful tools and how to be powerful and just himself.  

Happy Thanksgiving

Henry's Lookout Tower

Henry spent all day today outside, in our neighbors' yard.  Some of the time he was playing with their two boys, Carter and Emerson, ages 10 and 12, who are wonderful to him.  But much of the time he was just out there by himself, whacking things with sticks, carrying out various necessary tasks, firing his cannonball launcher (to do this, you put the big red ball on the ground and then drop a large square of plywood on it to make it bounce and roll away).  This is the lookout tower he built in their yard.  It's tricked out with various comforts: an oval piece of rusty metal ("this is for cleaning my shoes!  or, just one shoe"), a missile launcher (the rake with the big stick in it), the above-described cannonball system.  In these photos he is installing his steps of bricks.  Sometimes I am surprised to realize that he is still just a small, small boy, as I was when I saw him barely able to carry two bricks, or tonight when he was freshly out of the bath and zipping himself into his footie pajamas.  We are so fortunate to have these wonderful neighbors!  Their yard is a boy haven, and they tolerate Henry doing all sorts of things over there.  He climbs over the picket fence a dozen times a day.  By the way, it was about 50 degrees today!  After all day outside in the cool, fresh air, Henry ate a bunch of pumpkin pie and crashed in front of his video at about 6:00 pm.  A pretty perfect day for a small boy.

Rascal

Agatha is really walking, now.  For weeks she's taken a step or two here or there, and last week she took 5 or 6 steps a couple of times, but today she really mostly tried walking and did so for much longer times and distances than ever before.  So hooray!  

Come see my contraptions!

Henry's been a lego fiend for some time, but this week I bought him a tub of regular (tiny) lego blocks unaffiliated with a specific project so that he could build whatever he wanted.  He was a little dubious about this, since he adores following the instructions to build things, but soon warmed to it and today built this battle station for his bad guys.  It includes a separate jail for the good guys, a mobile shooter with a seat and stairs leading up to it so the guys can climb on (upper left), a boat with a steering handle and light (that's the orange thing in the foreground), and a cozy home for the bad guys with beds, a gun rack and a table and chairs.  Michael once used the word "contraptions" to refer to Henry's little helicopter and car, so now when Henry wants us to come up and inspect his work, he says, "Hey, guys, want to come see my contraptions?" 

Fashion

Two rear views of my willful fashionistas, on the porch.  Henry has been choosing his own outfits for some time, and he has a special penchant for stripes and primary colors-- actually all kinds of colors.  Note the stripy hat as well, which a friend made for Agatha (it came out a little big!) but which Henry seized upon with love as his own.  He sleeps in it.  The front of his sweatshirt has a florid Batman on it (hand-me-down!).  The next day, he wore the hat with horizontally striped pants from Aunt Grace AND a striped shirt with lime green in it, accessorized by his lime-green crocs (no socks that day, though).  Agatha was not yet dressed when we went out to wave goodbye to Henry, but she really wanted his yellow slicker-- a beautiful flannel-lined hand-me-down that he refuses to wear.  Notice that she is standing!  On her own!  She'll walk 5 or 6 steps when she wants to, but some days hardly walks at all.  It seems to be a low priority for her, oddly.  She likes to stick close to me at the moment, and is super cuddly, funny, and sweet.  Her sense of humor: trying to put inappropriate items in my mouth.  Hilarious! (to her)  Her latest cute accomplishment: she loves to sing "row, row, row" (leaving the rest of the lyrics to Henry and me).

Star Wars

"Mom, you know what?  A long, long time ago, like 30-100-40 years ago, there was nothing.  No houses, no grounds-- ooooonly sidewalks.  And then the Star Wars guys came down, and they grew up, and they were the first people on the earth."  "Wow. And what did they do?"  "They fought, and had battles. And then the emperor--well, you know what I think happened?  It wasn't just like in the movie.  I think what happened to the emperor was, they broke a window and they threw him out."


I think this is a mash-up of the Star Wars trilogy and 2001, of which he has (thankfully!) only seen the beginning.  I came in one evening and Henry and Michael were huddled around the computer, watching a movie, and Henry said, "Mom, a gorilla threw a leg bone up into the air and it turned into a spaceship!"  And I thought, that can only be one movie... 
Star Wars is very important right now.  Today I heard Henry sitting on the toilet, contemplating, and reciting all the characters, like a rosary: "Han Solo, Yoda, Lando Calrissian..."  What is it with boys and Star Wars?  I guess it's knights, pirates, space ships, good vs evil, and origin myths all packed into one.  What is surprising to me is that Henry identifies with the bad guys.  He plays at being a stormtrooper (his password to enter the boys' fort in our neighbor's yard is Stormtrooper-Luke-Sky) and is apparently always the bad guy in the schoolyard battles on the playground (Carver and Landis are the good guys, in case you were wondering).  Should I be worried about that?  I always wanted to be Princess Leia, myself-- not that there were many other female options.