Author: Laura K. Bedingfield

It’s been awhile since I’ve written, so I thought the least I could do was post a few pictures from our 2-week vacation at the beach.  We spent one weekend at the beautiful Ford Plantation to celebrate Russ’s parents’ 50th anniversary with the entire Herakovich clan…which is a lot of folks, in case you’re counting.

Jack just adores his cousin Jamie…

Come on, Mom!  It’s way too bright out here!

Theo and Sophie had a ball exploring the far reaches of the golf course.

One of my friends said she likes this picture because all 3 boys are running in different directions.  Par for the course.

Sweet Theodore…big baby belly and all.  And our big 6 year old below him (2 different pictures).

This might be the most serious picture we have taken of Jack.  It’s like I can look at his eyes and really see what he’ll look like at 15ish.  Scary.

Two weeks at the beach is a great way to spend the beginning of your summer.  I am confident that by the last few dwindling weeks of summer break, you would be far too drained in the areas most needed (i.e., patience, tolerance, creativity on rainy days) to be able to pull it off (at least without copious amounts of wine, that is; even with wine at the beginning of the summer, it was challenging to wrangle 3 boys ages 6 and under).

The best part about staying at the beach, to me, is my nightly walks with the dogs.  I have found several paved paths that lead out to the sea and love to grab a glass of wine, my best flip-flops, a dog (and 3 or 4 bags 😦 ) and take a nice little solo walk out to the beach through wooded, less-traversed ways.  The temperature usually has dropped for the day and the wind has picked up off the ocean so if you try really, really hard, you can pretend it’s possibly early autumn (this takes a pretty good bit of imagination and possibly a bit of wine, too, but it’s worth it).  It’s a completely rejuvenating little jaunt.  Good for the soul.  And with Henry, our deaf and unathletic cocker spaniel, by your side, it’s a jaunt you can take at your own pace.

Strep.

Jack, Tucker, Theo, and I all had strep this week.  Good times.  Theo was the last to be diagnosed–on Wednesday–so Friday morning, after having several doses of antibiotics in us all, we headed to our beach house…where russ promptly proceeded to catch a terrible cold.  We were able to get out and about some Friday night but today has been filled with short little jaunts to the beach by myself with the boys in tow (Russ has met up with us later).  Didn’t take my camera out today, but I so wish I had–the sunset and waves and joy of the boys to be free and running was incredible. I did get a few great shots last night, however…and if you’re going to be sick and/or recuperating, the beach isn’t too shabby a place where to do it.

First up, J and his lego creation:  Ducks on a Pond.  Having never, ever been very talented with legos, I am constantly amazed at J’s skill and creativity with them…must be an engineering gene in there somewhere.

At “Orange Beard’s Island”…Russ created a tall tale about Orange Beard who hid treasure and…well, you know the rest.  The water sprinkler (or “turd twirler,” as my parents used to call such a sprinkler in the “pond” in front of their first residence in Bogart, Ga.) provides the bubbles of Orange Beard’s now sunken ship…

Not so sure why I’m loving vertical pictures of late…but it does capture Tuck’s dangle from the jungle gym fairly well…

Bridge near Orange Beard’s–I was quite far away from J and T at this point…a bit nervewracking but the picture turned out well.  And the boys didn’t fall in and, when T is concerned, that’s always a good thing.

I have a picture of Jack spilling sand through his hands when he was about 2 years old; it’s on the wall in his bedroom.  There is something so nostalgic and sweet and innocent about it–much like in this picture above.

J’s new “serious” pose; T completely contemplates how to get in the pond on the golf course (and shows off his perfectly upturned Bedingfield nose…).

Russ:  “Tuck, do you know how to rake leaves?”
T:  “Yes!  Yes, I do!”
Russ:  “You do?  How?”
T:  “From Char-wee b-wown!”

And so begins our minimalist leaf pile and jumping experience…

After punting T as our official raker (Charlie Brown didn’t really teach him how to rake into a pile…more like raking into a line), Russ managed to scarf up enough leaves so the boys could pounce on them with minimal danger (of course, with T involved, this is all relative…).

That last shot is terribly blurry but it absolutely captures T’s joy!

“I’m camo-fwah-ged!”

Sweet Jackers was under the weather today, so we were thrilled to see him out for some fresh air.  And fresh air with a leaf pile means an opportunity to try to smother your brother…

Our little mini-pile is such a great precursor to the pile of leaves their Grandpa corrals in Charlottesville over Thanksgiving, but it’s so nice to see our little city boys getting back to nature.  Big props to the one tree in our front yard for donating its leaves tonight!

Bakugan, anyone?  Tuck has a new fascination:  Bakugans.  No, he has no idea what to really do with them (Russ looked it up and the gist is this:  ball up your Bakugan; roll it over a metal card and it pops open in full winged/beaked/scaled glory.  Your opponent does the same.  If both open, you are brawling–I found this term pretty funny–from then on it devolves into a complicated numerical ordeal that was lost on me because I was laughing too hard at the notion of magnetic rolly-critters “brawling”.)  Best I can figure, it’s jazzed up marbles for the 2009 set.  They fit perfectly in Theo’s mouth, which is an added bonus.

Speaking of Theo…our little guy is such a dream.  He signs lots of words now and has also really started talking, though Russ isn’t too keen on Theo calling him “mama.”  Theo would spend every waking moment outside if we let him…

On to our little artist…

J has always had a love of art and words.  Three nights ago, he created this all on his own.  It’s an anatomy chart of one’s “botee” (gotta love phonetical spellings).  He had so much fun doing this that we decided to make a lifesized project out of it for a playdate.  I had some rolls of art paper so we laid them out, traced around his, T’s and their playmate’s bodies and let them get to work…

Jack managed to draw in “lugs” (lungs), “fete” (feet), “fod” (food…can’t go hungry, you know) and “tume” (tummy) in addition to the usual parts.  There’s a certain doctor up in heaven smiling right about now…

Today is our last official day of summer break (we’re calling it that since we’ll spend the majority of tomorrow in the car). Our original plan was to pack up and leave our beach house this afternoon, but we just couldn’t do it. The boys have been having the greatest time ever; it’s just amazing to watch them all explore and play together.

Our Tucker loves to receive gifts (I mean, honestly, who doesn’t, right?), and regardless of its monetary value, Tucker will shower the giver with hugs and thanks for several days afterwards. Case in point: Russ gave Tuck a freebie calendar he’d gotten from the Virginia Tech business school; it’s one of those little pocket ones that has a page for each week. Tucker has slept with “his special book” in his bed and has had us write down “‘pecial things I see” in it. So far, he’s had us write “I pet a frog”, “I touched a fiddler crab”, “I saw a rainbow”, and “I love my Purple.” His ‘pecial book is going to be priceless one day.

Theo has absolutely perfected his walking ability while we’ve been here. When we arrived on last Saturday, he could walk about 10 feet or so before sitting down and resorting to the much more efficient crawl. Now, he is doing laps around the kitchen and living room, arms raised in the air and cackling the whole time.

Our J has turned into a fish this summer. For a child who would not jump off the diving board last year, he has made remarkable progress this summer. Check out his fancy dive above–it’s more like a kicking belly flop, but I guess when you only weigh 38 pounds, belly flops don’t hurt that much.

Pretty strong showing on the blog front, huh? J & T start back to school on August 24th (that’s in 11 days, but who’s counting?). I think we are all ready for some structure. Bring on the Montessori method!

I should not complain about child-rearing stress seeing as I just returned from a 4-night stint in Napa. My friends Natalie and Jill and I stayed in the most amazing house at the Carneros Inn and visited 6 wineries, plus the Vintners’ Collective. We ate insanely good food (The French Laundry!) and drank unbelievably good wine. To say the re-entry into family life from such spa-like digs was rough is an understatement…

Sweet Theo turned 1 on July 30th and is now trying his best to master the art of walking. There’s nothing more glorious than going into his room in the morning to his chantings of “Mama! Mama!” That third son is something else, I tell you…

Jack and Tucker have grown up so much this summer, too. I can’t wait to see how they change during the school year. They are “best brothers” and while they do have times where they pummel each other and have licking-wars (are you kidding me?), they are each incredibly loving and caring towards the other and it warms our hearts.

This was my “fortune” I found under my Magic Hat #9 cap tonight.  So fitting.  Magic Hat is the wondrous Burlington, VT beer I fell in love with during my stint at Brown in the summer of 1997.  To be fair, I actually fell in love with Magic Hat before that, but I certainly confirmed my adoration during my lone New England summer spent writing poetry in my hot, un-airconditioned graduate dorm room in Providence.  The little fortune-cookie-esque proverb underneath each Magic Hat cap is literally the cherry on top, particularly if one is pretending to be a poet during a much needed respite from being a grown-up.

Holy wow at how different my life is now, 12 years later.  Those nights of drinking lukewarm Magic Hats pulled from a dorm-room trash can filled with ice (so primitive–and, yes, lovely and retro), listening to Grant Lee Buffalo and the Smiths, and just wallowing in the catharsis were so…[sigh].  I have always told my parents I learned more that summer (and my summer backpacking in Europe) than I did during any of the other years I graciously spent in school.

Now I have three (3?  3!) sons stacked up there on top of my Master’s degree and my law degree.  Good use of money by my unbelievably generous parents, no?  The poet in me pulls me to write; the teacher in me pulls me to raise tiny geniuses; the humanitarian in me pulls me to help others as I’m called; the Epicurean in me makes this all rather difficult to accomplish.

Today was J and T’s last day of school.  I was probably the only mom who was sad about this; that worries me.  In preparation for the summer, I went out a few weeks ago and collected some terrific boyish books about science and chemistry.  I even had several of J and T’s pals over last week for a “Science Playdate” wherein we created Glue-Goo, blew Coke up with Mentos (yes, it does work, and it is impressive), and made Ziploc-“bombs”.  Clearly, I should have saved that playdate gig for a few weeks from now.

That said, I’m off to enjoy the last of my Magic Hat, coupled with a little The Sea and Cake…let it be.