If you're coming to St. Louis this summer, be sure to make a special visit to the Missouri Botanical Garden. Through 31 October, the garden is featuring the work of pop-artist Niki de Saint Phalle.

Sprinkled throughout the garden are forty 'larger-than-life mosaic sculptures' adorned with glass beads, pebbles, mirrored fragments, and ceramic tiles. All are beautiful, and kids are welcome to climb on, up, and through some of them:

'Fantastic animals fill Niki's work. She felt the part of her that stayed a child was the artist, and loved to see children playing on her sculptures.'

Read more about Niki's work →

In my opinion, the centerpiece of this exhibition is the six-ton, fifteen-foot tall La Cabeza, a grinning skull covered in golden tiles with teeth as big as your head.

There's something wonderful about seeing your son grinning from inside a grinning skull. In a way that's neither psychotic nor morbid.

 

Ian unearthed a toy mobile phone during last Friday's weekly treasure hunt at Grammie's. It's a slider, much smaller and cooler than mine, even though it's plastic and only connects to a cheerful Japanese operator.

Kelly was driving home while Ian tried to plan their day:

'Missouri...Botanical Garden...Start over...Missouri...Missouri Botanical Garden...One...'

Parental Recollections
By Charles Lamb

A child's a plaything for an hour;
     Its pretty tricks we try
For that or for a longer space;
     Then tire, and lay it by.

But I knew one, that to itself
     All seasons could controul;
That would have mock'd the sense of pain
     Out of a grieved soul.

Thou, straggler into loving arms,
     Young climber up of knees,
When I forget thy thousand ways,
     Then life and all shall cease.

Lately Ian's first response to anything—bath, bed, green beans, global warming—is to whine. It's like watching The View or listening to NPR.

Depending upon the perceived level of annoyance and/or inconvenience, his whining covers the spectrum from a dejected 'Aww!' to a piercing, face-crumpling, foot-stomping cry that sometimes makes me thankful we don't own a gun.

As a father, I'm supposed to be patient and understanding. I'm expected to remember that he's only four or that he's missed his nap or had a long day. An expanding list of variables meant to temper my response to his behavior.

Which is a wonderful theory, and has helped me learn (some) patience. But sometimes the kid is wrong.

Last week Ian was in the car, holding a balloon and complaining that it was round. Or something. (When I get a flu shot I don't notice what's in the syringe.) He was whining, clutching the balloon and making that awful, squeaky sound.

Kelly said from the side of her mouth, 'Wouldn't it be great if the balloon popped?'

As a working parent, I've resigned myself to mornings of psychological warfare with a son who'd rather I stay home and play. Quivering bottom lips, dejected sighs, slumped shoulders. Sometimes he'll move beyond the passive-aggressive and cling to my leg or kiss my cheek. Barbed phrases like 'But I miss you' or 'I want to play with you' that slide under my skin and fester throughout the day.

This morning Ian moved quietly into avant-garde and wrote his name above a sad face he'd drawn on his dry-erase board. He held it in front of his chest and looked at me, pleadingly, saying nothing, before lowering his head. A lost puppy who needs a loving home.

I kissed his cheek, opened the door, and walked into the rain.