Malcolm's Train Ride Part 2

Malcolm's Summer Time Train Rides PT 1

Here are videos of him riding in the dome car through the Royal Gorge with Grandma and his cousins Matthew and Makaela. We also went on the train to the top of Pikes Peak where we had fresh donuts that reminded me of the mandazi we had in Kenya and hot chocolate. Life was good. Now we are all trying to get back to life in Portland, and Grandma is staying with us which is great. I am really missing Victor though and thinking a lot about the Family Reunion.

Malcolm in Chicago

The windy city












Riding Thomas at Navy Pier
















Playing in the water at Crown Fountain in Millennium Park





















Reading in the Chicago Public Library
















Taking the El

Malcolm and the Girl Across the Street

Malcolm loves S, the girl across the street. He loves her soo much that he even made up an imaginary friend just like her, except the imaginary friend is always home and he is allowed to walk over to his house by himself in that world. I think that it is very cute. I hope that they are able to stay friends for a while because he is already missing Sequoia.

Surviving the Great Recession

I have not had much time to blog lately, and honestly I have gotten a little distracted by the discovery of Facebook although I have not had much to say on there lately either.

I often read these beautiful blogs written by mamas who make all sorts of wonderful creations while caring for families of two or three kids and a more elaborate garden etc, and everything seems so blissful. Then I wonder, are they for real?

Ok, I adore my son and really do love my hubby, but it seems that it is taking all of me to just figure out how to survive in this economy and taking on all the side gigs here and there to stay afloat in this economy. Although the big news is that I am going back to school. I know that this will be hard on Malcolm when the time comes, but in the end I think that it will help us with our goal to be able to live in another country for a few years. We are very established in Portland, we have so much community here which is really hard to leave, but also every day that goes by and I realize that if something does not change I may have to send my son to public school and I explore these options I grow more panicked. I do not see a way to survive economically and homeschool my child, but what is going to happen to my beautiful little Black boy?

I know it is 2009, a Black man is president, but I have seen the deadness and despair in the eyes of many of the neighborhood children. I am haunted by my public school education in which I learned very well that anyone who looked at all like me and tried to make a difference was shot, and I learned that there is only one model of learning and if did not fall into you must be stupid.

I worry about him entering Kindergarten too late and being turned off early because he can not explore and be challenged, but not passing the test to enter into school early because while he can tell you about several models of trains and can not count in five languages he is not counting high enough in English or has not delved deeply enough in the areas they test and is not tested on the areas he has explored. Do they test on how many kinds of birds commonly found in the Pacific Northwest you can name? Do they test Kindergarteners for how much they know about the life cycle of a chicken, frog, or human child? How about how many countries and states you locate on the world map? How many dinosaurs you can name? How many songs you can sing, or rhythms you can play on the drums or guitars? How about how well you can dig with a garden hoe, plant beans, water your own garden or follow the growth of fruit? These are all things that Malcolm is intimately familiar as well as various models of trains, how to swing on a rope, build with blocks, make art and all the other things that a pre-schooler should know. He also knows that S is for Sequoia, Sela, and snake, and M is for Malcolm, Mama, and Maya and several other letters and associated words. He does not make the September cut-off though so what do I do if our little community school collapses and I can not find a new places that understands and yet have to work to survive and then find an elementary school, because I think that he will need to complete at least one year of school in this country before we can leave. Anyone have suggestions? Here are some pictures of him that one of the teachers at Mountain Valley took. He is wearing his Barack Obama "Yes, we did!" shirt.

Adorable Beach Pictures

It has finally started to get hot in Portland, and since things have been so hectic lately, I am trying to embrace every opportunity to get Malcolm and I to beautiful settings. We both love blue herons and ended up at the beach in their pursuit. This time though, we just got to commune with the seagulls. That's ok, I am coming to appreciate seagulls out here. Some of these pictures are a little blurry because of the blowing sand. It was pretty windy on the beach last Wednesday.

A Moment to Pause

We have been so busy lately that there has been no time to write which is very unfortunate, because there have been so many things that I have wanted to write about. Malcolm has been keeping his busy social schedule. I think that he has much more community and friends than the average three year old around here. Keeping up with all that keeps me very busy, but honestly as I talk to more parents it seems that they do not spend nearly as much helping their children deepen their relationships with their peers. It seems that is rarely prioritized, and I wonder why. In many ways it is much easier for me when Malcolm has other children around. He is entertained and the adults in the house do not have to perform, we are able to get much more done, and he is much less crabby than usual in the evenings because he is so happy to play and less focused on being tired and hungry and wanting immediate gratification. Often, it is also means that the adults in the house get to connect with other adults as well, so other than a little extra clean-up and perhaps a slightly later bedtime, I don't really see the downside. He is so enriched by having those relationships and challenged to learn and grow in many other ways that I feel that it is really important.

I think that perhaps other people just feel that they want more time to just be with their families, and I often feel that way, but I often think that adding more children and parents at least weekly just intensifies the quality of that time. I don't know, perhaps I am not really explaining it well, or perhaps I feel this way because of my cultural perspective and the cultural perspectives of other adults in the house. All the other adults in the house grew up in places where extended family was the norm, and although it was mostly my mom and I growing up she did have a very large social network of family friends that help raise me and that is where I learned my community-building skills.

I am often struck though by how different the world is that Malcolm is growing up in. I often hear people say that Portland is not diverse, but they must live in a different Portland than we do. On our block all the families with children have bilingual parents, and all of them are bilingual in different languages Tongan, Swahili, Spanish, and probably more that I have not discovered further down the street. They all ride their bikes, watch out for the neighborhood raccoon, tell stories about what our chickens do when they get out, and new friends are starting to play in our garden or hang out with us in the park.

Malcolm does not see language as a barrier to play. He sees every child around his age as a friend he hasn't met yet. He already knows that he can be president, and he loves his large group of important adults.

We have been spending lots of time in the garden since the sun returned to the Rose City. Last year, I never took pictures of the garden this year I want to make sure that I keep tabs on its evolution. So here are some pictures that I took in the last few days, but there have already been some major changes that will need to be posted later.

Making Bread

I have been really inspired in the breadmaking department lately. It helps me feel that I am connected to women and ancestors all over the world, and that no matter what the economy does that I can feed my family. I wish that we had enough land that I could take all this urban farming to the next level, but I am able to grow some of the herbs for the bread and harvest the eggs from our yard, that is a great start, but what I wouldn't give for a little land, some fresh honey and a garden overflowing with food and flowers to frolic and learn in. In the meantime, I am still experimenting with the bread. Here are the pictures of my last batch of abundant loaves for the family.

New Life, New Struggles, New Growth

It is definitely still Springtime, and I am thrilled that some little bit of sunshine has finally returned to Portland. If you don't live in the Pacific Northwest or perhaps a tropical rainforest then you may not know what it is like to feel like your feet are starting to mold, and that perhaps that myth about Oregonians growing duck feet is not that far off. I am not really designed for that, and my husband, being a native of Kenya in East Africa is definitely not designed for all that rain. To top that off the little that we managed to preserve from our first year garden last year has all been depleted. I am so tired of grocery store food, I am aching for sun and food directly from our backyard. The recession has also hit our house, neighborhood church, just life in general. We have a friend, another Kenyan immigrant staying with us because he has not been able to find a job for months, our neighbors next door have an in-law staying with them for the same reason and another part of community village has lost her job as well. So I have been thinking more and more about the adage that "real revolutionaries grow their own food."

It seems like despite our best efforts at nonviolent communication, or general togetherness this house has been full of very loud processing while all of the struggles that we face come up. Honestly, it is all here we are very diverse household. Two of us are immigrants, one of us is a child, one of us is queer, most of us are Black, and let just say that income is enough at the moment, but you never know, it can still be tenuous. So Easter fell in the midst of all this, and brought with it the message of new life and I started processing that. Then I had an issue with my tooth that brought unbearable pain, but one of my coworkers at school put me on to squirting Echinacea directly on the area. The earth is miraculous! This was amazing, and then this same week we got our baby chicks.

Here are some pictures of our garden starting to come alive, and the new baby chicks. I still have at least three posts worth of topics to cover today, but I will try to break them into sections so that you can all read the parts that are most interesting to you.

My favorite moments

These days my favorite moments are when Geoffrey and Malcolm are sleeping and I am lying on the bed listening to them. It so sweet and so peaceful.

The other thing that I love is gazing at our garden, the chicken, our vegetable starts growing and the circle of tulips around the plum tree which is now in bloom. I can gaze out the window endlessly at it on rainy days and just sit and play the rest of the days. I am also noticing that the native Currant and Salmonberry bushes that I planted are thriving.

Garden hikes in the city

Today Malcolm and I finally made it to the Honeybee Hike in Leach Botanical Gardens. I had read about it in the Metro Parent which is my guide to events kid-related in the city. It was a lot of fun and I felt like I had discovered a whole new world in Portland that I had not known about. I would not have expected this beautiful forested area to be off of 122nd. I am posting pictures here of Malcolm looking at the little pond. He was trying to see if he could see the frog eggs. I promised him that we can go back when the tadpoles hatch, and he also loved looking at the mallard duck couple. The theme of the walk was shapes so we went through the garden trying to find different shapes in the flowers and the leaves.
Malcolm trying to see the frog eggs in the pond-"When are the baby frogs coming mama? When will the eggs open?

Two Mallard ducks graced us with their presence.

My Little Lion

Malcolm has really been into being a lion lately. It was this game that started at Mountain Valley a long time ago, and then never really stopped. Malcolm rushes to get into the lion costume as soon as we get to school, and will only take it off long enough to use the potty, and only if I reassure him that I will save the lion costume until he is done peeing which I faithfully do lest disaster occur.

He did have a week of biting at school which was hard on all of us as a community, but it seems that a week off for spring break was just what he needed. He says that he wants to be a happy lion now that gives hugs, although mostly he only wants to do it to his favorite people.

He is growing in so many ways, but in other ways he is really a mystery to me at this point. He can express so many things and tells elaborate stories, but there is a way that he is separating himself from me too. These days he really wants Daddy or Uncle much of the time and does not want mama.

I know that this is a part of growing up, although this is making my I want another baby hormone go wild too, but of a part of me is injured. I am sort of indiginant " Hey remember you came out of my body? Quite painfully I might add, and I have rearranged my world for you and to spend time with you and home and community school you and teach you about art and music, and how to make things and go on endless train rides with you? Remember me?"

Also, for the past two days he has refused to nap for me. He is obviously exhausted but he just won't sleep and then he spends the rest of the afternoon bursting into tears, and I try to use all my nonviolent communication to empathize our way through. The problem is you are supposed to give yourself empathy first, and I always skip that part. I know I am not supposed to forget that part, but I don't really know how to do it. Is anyone willing to shout "Stop self-empathy first" at me the next time he is screaming?

Signs of Spring

Spring has finally begun to spring in Portland. There is talk of chickens everywhere! We went to a tuplip festival, and our garden has been completely transformed into an urban homestead. I will post pictures of that soon, but am still plagued with a few technical difficulties. There do still seem to be a lot of uncertainities in the air, the recession is definitely impacting Portland, but when the sun comes out after all those months of "liquid sunshine" and we all get our much needed doses of vitamin D, everyone's mood changes.

I am also uplifted by other things. I am taking a class with Geoffrey and Nathaniel in Nonviolent Communication with Children. I love this class! I can not really get enough of it. I can't say that I have perfected it, epsecially in some of those more heated moments, but it does give me another perspective and way of looking at things, and a different way of approaching other family members in the house. In fact, it has given me a whole new set of tools for communicating with many people at Mountain Valley as well as at home. It is continuing to shift my thinking in terms of how I want to raise Malcolm, and educate him.

I am really open to a lot of possible futures for Mountain Valley, but it would be great if it became a charter school and then it would really be a special place for kidsof multiple ages where we could really venture out into the city and other parts of the wide wide world to learn about all sorts of things.

I am also learning a lot more about permaculture, simple living, and many other things. I am just dying to dive into all of these inter-connected areas and recreate myself and create the world with Malcolm and my family. I have been saying lately that what I really want to do is to make stuff, grow stuff, and create stuff. Malcolm is done baking pumpkin bread with his Uncle. I got to go-bathtime.

Family Photos

My long lost brother ( he would probably say that I am the one that was lost) came into this week for a visit. So Malcolm got to meet his Uncle Victor. It was great. We got to learn a little bit about what he discovered about the Bridgeman family tree, and connect. We went to a wodnerful Korean restaurant called Toji. By the time we got back though Malcolm was totally exhausted. We kept him out way past bedtime.

Daddy's Back from Kenya!

Geoffrey finally arrived yesterday. I can not express how much we missed him, and it seems like the world shifted as soon as he arrived. Malcolm is more excited and fulfilled than I have seen him in a long time. In fact they went out to ride the Max train while I worked on our taxes ( still not finished) and worked on updating the blog.

Here are some pictures of the reunion. Geoffrey showered us with beautiful African clothes!

Malcolm' Trip with Uncle

On Valentine's Weekend Nathaniel took Malcolm on a little trip up to the Olympic Peninsula to give me a much needed break, a chance to get a little respite before Geoffrey came home a few weeks later. He got to meet his little cousins up there, at least we think of them as cousins. Nathaniel's family is ours after all.