He's FIVE
Myles is FIVE! His birthday was on Wednesday, and the celebration began last weekend when Seth's family came into town for Myles' birthday party. He had another pool party at the YWCA, and we had a blast. Then he had another party at school on his actual birthday and, because he had requested "barbecue" as his birthday meal, we went out to Luella's (mama doesn't make barbecue).
Last week I accomplished the following: swept, vacuumed, or mopped every room in the house, cleaned the bathrooms, dusted the furniture, changed the sheets, ran the Hot Chocolate 10k in the rain (thanks for hooking me up Colleen!), baked a birthday cake and birthday cupcakes, wrote a sermon, and hosted Seth's family. It was a little overwhelming, but I just kept breathing through it and trying to enjoy each moment. Myles ran his first race, the Marshmallow dash, along with Seth (it was quite informal), and Seth placed 9th in the 10k with a time of 36 minutes and something seconds. He then came back and ran the last mile with me, in the rain, holding my soggy clothes. How great is that?
Last Friday night we had a service project/pizza party at church, cutting fabric for shoes. A local organization called Sole Hope provided us with a video about children in Uganda and Zambia who are getting preventible, painful parasites in their feet for lack of shoes. Sole Hope encourages groups like ours to provide and cut fabric for shoes (they sent us patterns), which are then sewn by widows/widowers in Africa as well as homeless folks here in WNC to offer them a source of income. Sole Hope then buys the shoes from the shoe-makers and puts them on the feet of Ugandan and Zambian children to prevent these parasites. It was a fun, moving night. The photo of Seth above includes sweet Miles, not our Myles, but another 5 year old red-headed Miles from church...isn't he precious? They are tracing and cutting fabric. The kids also painted the fabric before we cut it. It's a fabulous project that I would recommend to anyone looking for a good service project. By the end of the night, we could empathize with all those laborers who do cutting/sewing work--one table was ready to unionize!
Myles always has a blast with Seth's family. He has a special relationship with Grandpa Hendler, which means a lot to me (and my mom) since losing my dad. They love to cook, laugh, play, and read books together. Mostly, Myles just wants to be next to him. Seth's brothers came all the way from Richmond, VA to be with us, and Myles loved every minute of it.
On Tuesday, Seth and I took a few hours to tour three of the local elementary schools nearest us. We have a magnet system for the Asheville city public schools, which means they try to honor parent choice in which school you would like your child to attend. While they all follow the same curriculum, each school has a magnet theme: experiential education, arts & humanities, global scholars, etc. Our first choice for Myles will be Isaac Dickson which is closest to our house. Myles' god-sisters, Claire and Lydia, both attend this school and have had a wonderful experience there. Their focus is experiential, hands-on education, and so they have outdoor gardens and a pizza oven, an outdoor classroom, animals in almost every room, a kitchen for cooking, and they go on lots of field trips. The philosophy is rooted in the Foxfire approach which is a particularly Appalachian approach based on progressive educational principles from folks like John Dewey. We think that with all of Myles' bodily energy, he will do well in an experiential classroom. On the other hand, as so many parents have told us, it all comes down to the teacher, and there will be excellent teachers and not-so-excellent teachers at any school. We submit Myles' application in a few weeks and will hear back in the spring about whether we will get our first choice. Some of Myles' friends from church and preschool will be entering kindergarten at Isaac Dickson as well, so he will hopefully have someone he knows in his classroom. One thing I love about Dickson is that all teachers do home visits for every child in their class. What a treat!
Tomorrow, Seth will head to WV for a parks/rec operations manager training for five days. Hopefully my mom will come for a few days in there to give us some company and, as irritated as I get with Juniper's antics, I probably will sleep with her while Seth is gone since I have such a hard time sleeping alone, and Myles is all elbows and knees these days.
Mylestones: Myles is learning to swim! He's almost got it down, his last class for this round is next week, and Seth reports he's pretty amazing. Myles has also gotten good at making his bed.
Myles Says: Probably the coolest thing that Myles said lately was his made-up story of how Herod became good. One Sunday we told the story of baby Jesus leaving Egypt with his family b/c King Herod was out to get them (he had also read this book in the family story Bible). He asked me later that day if Herod was a bad man. I said yes, and we talked about why. About an hour later he came back to me and said, "Wanna hear the story of how Herod became good?" "Yes!" He continued, "Well, first a bad guy went to see King Herod dressed up as a scarecrow. King Herod was so scared that he ran away to another planet. On that planet, a small friendly alien put King Herod in a room and closed the door. The alien told King Herod jokes until Herod laughed so much that he turned good. King Herod then came back home and brought food to Mother Mary and baby Jesus, since they didn't have any food. And from that time on, he was good." The first thing that cracked me up about this is that it includes elements from books we had recently checked out from the library and also the food thing was related to the fact that we had "Share the Feast Sunday" that week when we bring canned food for our local food bank. I love how he synthesizes things! When I posted this on fb, a friend observed that Myles has some really good theology: fear propels Herod into wilderness/exile where he experiences love through laughter, then repentance/turning, then works of gratitude. The pastor-mama is happy. Myles also loves to get into a back-and-forth about whether I love him more or vice versa. On this particular day, he told me he loved me more than I loved him and I said, "Impossible!" He said, "Mama, 'impossible' is not a nice word." True that! Out of the mouths of babes.
Well, that's enough for now. Trying to update more frequently, just a little. Love to all yall!
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posted by Seth and Mandy at
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