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| The Thorp Gang, April 2013 |
It’s been many months, but it’s here: our first online-only, illustrated Holiday Letter, just in time for Pentecost. (Download and open or print for the best viewing experience.) Thank you all for your patience — and for asking about it occasionally, which was just enough inspiration to finally get it done!
http://www.facebook.com/v/3953178462416
Rose’s zip line ride: see number 5, below…
Every year for the past five or so, Jodi and I and the kids have joined 30 or so families from St. Michael’s and St. Albert’s parishes at a camp near Upsala, Minnesota, called Camp Lebanon. The first year I didn’t want to go, a) because with a dining hall, water toys, and showers, it wasn’t really camping; b) because I was going to be surrounded by kids not my own; and c) because I didn’t feel like I knew enough people and wasn’t looking forward to being “on” all weekend.
All true observations…none of which had any impact on my actual enjoyment of the weekend. We’ve been going back ever since, and even organized it a couple of years.
No time to do a complete recap of the weekend, but here are the Top 10 Highlights:
10. Not My Job! I had hoped to be done with my work early on Friday so we could be on the road by 3 p.m. or so. Not even close, and when 4 p.m. rolled around and I was still packing, my blood pressure started to rise.
Then I remembered: We’re not running things this year. We can get up there any time before tomorrow, and it’s all good.
Turns out we made it in plenty of time for Friday evening activities — and with Lily this year, it’s a good thing we weren’t the organizers! Kudos to Sustaceks, Duerrs, and Fredricksons for a great weekend!
9. New Faces. We missed a number of dear friends who weren’t there…but there were so many new families, too, that you couldn’t help but make new connections. I met potential homebrewers, Axis and Allies enthusiasts, future KCs, and just all-around good guys — hopefully next year the old and the new will all show up, and then some!
8. Albany Invasion. Albany, Minnesota, is the last stop for food on the way to the camp. A gas station just off the freeway houses A&W, Subway, Godfather’s Pizza, Taco John’s, and Chester’s Fried Chicken counters under one roof — and Friday afternoon, it hosted nearly every family bound for Camp Lebanon in constant rotation. I’m sure the locals had to be wondering about the volume of strangers greeting each other with hugs and handshakes.
7. Has Anyone Seen… Once we settle in at camp, the kids are off and running with their friends. Jodi and I ate with grown-ups and Lily, and generally soaked up the weekend, only rousing ourselves occasionally to ask around, “Has anyone seen [CHILD’S NAME HERE]?” And we were hardly the only ones.
6. Holy Spirit at Work. More than once, someone stopped to share that the weekend itself, or something someone did or said, was just what they needed — that the Holy Spirit was at work last weekend. But the most striking example came on Sunday morning, when one of my own overextended children decided to disobey Jodi and run off to play with friends. I confronted the child and had a long talk about the responsibilities that come with being family — and I thought it sunk in. Only a few minutes later, a local seminarian, Paul, offered a scripture reflection in which he talked about how family is diminished when one person acts selfishly — and I looked over to see wide, staring, glassy eyes. I asked about it later, and was told, “I heard him and I was like, “Seriously?!” Wow.
5. Zip Line! I watched two grown men race over a wooded ravine, brazen in their talk but white in their knuckles. I watched our priest and seminarian zip through the tree tops — Father was pounding his chest; Paul was all smiles and thumbs up. But best of all, I watched Emma nervously strap up after watching the men, whimpering and sighing a bit under her breath; watched her set out across the ravine tentatively, and watched her slide back over, screaming and giggling, barely able to speak “That was awesome!” to the camera. She is the only Thorp to have done it so far. She deserves applause.
4. Dating Survey. A few friends began asking an unofficial survey question of the couples at camp: “Do you and your spouse go on dates?” Jodi said, “Not really.” I said, “Occasionally.” Then we both said, “Unless running errands or getting groceries alone together count.” The ruling came back: if we are specifically going together and leaving the kids behind, it counts. Oh, yes, we are still romantic!
3. Early Morning Run. Brendan rose at 6:45 a.m. on a Saturday to go running with a few of the guys from school — and a few girls. I rose a little after 7, and when I emerged from the bathhouse, they were coming the hill from the lake: four or five girls, graceful and light on their feet, and two clomping boys bringing up the rear. Turns out the girls were all cross-country runners, and the two wrestlers were the only boys motivated enough to get up that early. What motivated them to keep pace with the fleet-footed young ladies over two or three miles? I’m going with sheer stubborn pride…though at that age, who can guess? (For an alternative explanation, see the video below…)
2. Family Prayer. Family rosaries each night, and Saturday evening mass with sunbaked parents and waterlogged kids doing their best to be reverent. Families praying together with families. There’s nothing better, except…
1. Serenading Lily. Every year we listen to The White Stripes on the way to the camp. This year Lily was fussing until the guitars and drums kicked in, and, to a person, all four of her siblings began to sing to her.
Wish I could’ve recorded them doing it — leaning over her car seat, almost in harmony, and her grinning, gasping, laughing face. She’s pretty good-looking (for a girl).
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| The Eyes Have It: Lily at a fundraiser dinner, taking it all in. That’s not Jodi holding her…she sucked in countless others that evening to do her bidding. (Photo: Michelle LeMonds at Michelle LeMonds Photography) |
If she sees you, then loses sight, she cries. If you initiate eye contact or conversation, then look away or fall silent, she cries. If you pick her up only to put her down – whether in her car seat or among her toys – she cries. If you hold her close and sit, she wants to stand; if you stand, she wants to move…and again, if you look her in the eye, don’t be the first to look away. She cries.
Until two weeks ago she refused to take bottle. She wanted to nurse, exclusively and often, and would accept no substitute. To give Jodi a moment’s peace, for the first time in five children, we decided to try a pacifier. She bit it and spit it out.
Finally her insatiable appetite got the best of her; now she demands the bottle. And when she wants it she wants it: four ounces at a minimum, no matter how much she’s nursed. Sometimes she still screams when you give it to her, but just try to take it from her…she cannot get it to her face on her own, but lie her on her back and she will clasp it to her chest with both hands. Sometimes if you try to help, she gets agitated — but step away, and invariably she will drop it and scream.
She won’t swallow baby cereal. She’ll eat a little pureed green beans, grimacing and shuddering the whole way — as though she knows the adage, “That which does not kill you makes you stronger.”
Whereas Trevor often insisted, verbally and mentally, the world match his ideas about it, Lily makes it so. We’ve tried to wait her out when she gets owly. Thus far she appears to have more time than we do. She’s like a first-quality air-raid siren: made to be heard in the worst conditions, and just as loud an hour or more later.
And she knows what she likes. One night while pacing the kitchen, trying to get her to sleep, I found myself unable to keep from nuzzling the black fuzz on the back of her head. Our other kids would duck away when I do this – they couldn’t stand the prickliness of my clipped goatee. Lily, by contrast, moved her head slowly side to side against my whiskers, then pressed it deliberately into my chin. I turned away, then back to her; again she rubbed her head on my chin, then leaned hard against it.
Over time, she began to put her bare cheek against my whiskers, then her open mouth, and now, her nose and rapidly blinking eyes. She can barely stand it, but she persists nonetheless. That which does not kill you…
Will she be a climber? Time will tell. She is strong; she rolls easily, quickly, and repeatedly, and as of last week, spins quickly on her belly to orient herself toward whatever she desires, then arm-crawls across any terrain. If she reaches her objective, she grasps and consumes it, first with her eyes, then with her gaping, smiling mouth, toothless except on the bottom.
She’s our monsterpiece. As I’ve said countless times now: “Good thing she’s cute…”
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| Daddy’s Girls: Y’all realize the only thing keeping Lily where she’s at is the friction of my whiskers on her fuzzy little head — that’s why my head is tilted to hers. Not snuggling…nosiree! (Photo: Katrina Nielsen at Spiritus Capere Photography) |
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The other day, Trevor was talking to Emma, matter-of-factly, about the spider that lives behind the door in the downstairs bathroom.
“Kids,” I said, “if you can say, ‘Y’know the spider that lives behind the door…’ it’s been there too long.”
“It’s a daddy long-legs,” offered Emma, helpfully.
“A daddy long-legs is a hunter and doesn’t stay in one place,” I countered, unsure as to why it mattered. “It’s probably one of those long-legged cobweb spiders we find in the basement. It should be gotten rid of.”
Skeletal critters. Creepy.
“It helped me get over my fear of spiders,” said Trevor. “Gabe, too. He talked to it, and wasn’t afraid anymore. So did I.”
Too cute, but I persisted: “It’s gotta go. Gabe, will you take care of it?”
Gabe swallowed hard. “Uh. Sure.” He looked sick.
“They don’t live that long, so it’s probably not the same spider.”
“It’s not that,” he said. “I don’t mind killing it, except that I don’t like killing — squishing — anything!”
“I don’t care if you catch it in a cup and let it outside, but it’s gotta go,” I said. “See what you can do.”
He goes downstairs, and I hear him fumbling around. Sigh.
“Brendan!” I call. “Help Gabe if he needs it, okay?”
“‘Kay.”
More fumbling behind the door, and muffled voices, then I hear Brendan: “C’mon Gabe! It’s the only way he’ll get to spider heaven! You’re helping him!”
Not exactly what I had in mind.
Last summer, for my bride’s birthday, we bought paint. Emma’s room needed some work prior to the arrival of Lily, and Jodi has wanted the bathrooms redone for quite awhile now. Since the upstairs bathroom gets the most traffic (and since most of the changes there were to be cosmetic) we bought paint for Emma’s room and the upstairs bathroom and looked for time to undertake these projects.
Emma and I finally tackled her room this past fall. She helped a lot – but although I knew she liked to paint, I also figured most of her enthusiasm had to do with it being her room and us using paint she picked out.
Lily arrived, then Christmas and New Year’s, and the bathroom remained untouched. We got new towels to coordinate with new Bird’s Egg Blue shade Emma had helped pick for the bathroom, but the walls remained a splotchy, pale sea green. Finally Valentine’s Day rolled around, and Jodi didn’t want anything. I offered to make sure the bathroom was repainted by St. Patrick’s Day. She accepted.
Luckily, last Friday was a day off for me. I asked Emma to help me by taking down the decorations and the shower curtain. She did, then served as my “gofer,” bringing me tools, etc., as I needed them. As we got closer to actually painting, she asked if she could help with that, too.
“Of course you can,” I said. “Thanks for the offer!”
She helped prep the walls for the first coat, helped roll it on, watched me do the brush work around the edges, then went with me to Goodwill and Menards to look for a medicine cabinet. When we returned late in the afternoon, a friend asked her if she wanted to come over and play. She declined.
“I’m helping my dad,” she said.
“Wow, Rosie,” I said, “I didn’t know you liked to paint so much.”
“I do,” she said, “but I also like spending time with you.”
I melted. I know it won’t be like this forever, but still.
The next day, St. Patrick’s Day, we were the first two up. We put on our green t-shirts and listened to Flogging Molly over breakfast, then went back to work. Later Emma and I and Trevor continued our quest for a medicine cabinet – found an over-the-toilet model we had missed at Menard’s, plus an antique mirror at a shop in Elk River. We returned home just in time for Emma to enlist her mom’s guidance in another project all her own: Jodi and I were going out for the evening, and Emma had planned to make the boys a St. Patrick’s Day cake with green frosting and pistachios. She wanted to do it all herself, but want to get it in the oven before we left, just in case.
Here is the result:
Emma did everything herself, including the decorating. (She learned that it pays to let the cake cool a bit more first.) Her three brothers each ate two small pieces that night while Jodi and I were gone; Emma didn’t taste it until Sunday, since she had given up sweets for Lent. She earned two 10s, and a 9 from Trevor, who said the cake was still a little too warm when she served it. Jodi and I thought it was excellent.
Especially since Lily’s arrival, Emma has been a tremendous help, and she is becoming quite the young lady. For her birthday this month, she wants money to save for a Nook or a Kindle so she can read more without lugging books. I’ve had many opportunities to talk with her these past several days, and I also learned:
Gosh, I love that girl. And good help is right next door!
Archangel Stomp 