Nursery Schooled

Today was the last day of Julia’s preschool career. I won’t recite all the clichés about how it seems like she just started preschool yesterday, but they all apply. Instead, I’ll say that she has thrived at school, especially this year, when she has had one of the best teachers I’ve ever known, someone who has been phenomenally patient, creative, and engaging and – perhaps more importantly – has imparted a ridiculous amount of actual knowledge to Julia (and I hope, other kids)

I was lucky enough, this year, to participate in several school activities such as visitor’s day and the field trip to the nature center earlier this month. Here’s what we looked like, heading back home. Ain’t she cute? 

Congratulations on a successful start to your academic life, Julia Charlotte! 

River Bend Field Trippers

Vivi and Me

One nice and unexpected side effect of Julia’s penchant for riding her bike is that I get to spend a lot more time alone with Vivi, who is rounding into quite an interesting little girl. I mean, she was always interesting, but there’s less screaming and shrieking now, which makes it easier to actually talk to her (favorite topics: her ability to use the toilet, favorite colors, her alter ego “Big Boy,” and dogs) and to do things with her.

While tooling around Carleton’s campus on Saturday, for instance, we stopped and played at various spots while Julia rode ahead and then turned back. Vivi especially enjoyed climbing up on the boulders and wooden beams that make up the “Sticks and Stones” sculpture thingy at the southeast corner of the Bald Spot. No big sister trying to climb on the same stones, or jump off the same sticks! She was pretty proud of her ability to scramble up to the top of the biggest boulder – from which I had to say that she could not jump (even wearing a snazzy bike helmet).

Vivi Up High

Drawing after Dark

The drawing class I’ve been taking this term culminating with assignments that demand the integration of various discrete skills we had acquired (and, to some degree) honed earlier in the term. For Thursday’s session, we used black and white Conté crayons to draw a complex scene on a huge sheet of very dark, very heavy paper.

Throwing out some ideas for suitable drawings, the prof suggested trying to to draw a night scene. Since I don’t have many daylight hours in which to do any outdoor drawing, I headed down to the Lyman Lakes on Wednesday night to draw Mai Fete Island after dark. This is roughly the scene I saw – a pretty good test of looking slowly, closely, and carefully. I dunno how I did, in any objective sense, with the drawing, but I’ll try to post it tomorrow, just for comparison’s sake.

Mai Fete Island

A New Cycle

As soon as I got home from work tonight, I headed back out the door with Julia, Genevieve, and our neighbor girl, M., all of whom were hankering to ride their bikes to the playground. I was, myself, hankering to be outside, so I was happy to go with them.

M., on her (too-small) bike and Vivi, on her Big Wheel trike, did great. Julia, on the other hand, not only did great – pedaling happily and steadily for 60 minutes or more – but grew up right in front of me. She actively refused the little pushes she usually requests, she remembered both how to start from a standstill and how to stop on an incline, she deftly steered around all kinds of obstacles (including, several times, Vivi), and even she even took a lap of the neighborhood park with M. while I stayed with Vivi. Thinking about it, I’m sure that, in all the thousands of hours I’ve spent with her, I have never been physically further away from Julia than I was when she was on one side of Heywood Park and I was on the other. I was amazed and impressed and delighted and – since nothing parental can be unmixed – a little bit sad.

Then again, with this success under our belts, we can now bike and walk all over creation – or at least our subdivision.

Spring at Carleton

Carleton was exceptionally Carleton today. The entire campus seemed to be suffused with green – not just the colors of regular old spring, but one step beyond, thanks to the wet air and intermittent rain.

And then there was wackiness that kidnaps the ordinary during every spring term. A student used a step ladder to climb onto the lowest branch of the oak that stands near the center of campus; she sat there, sketching the tree all around her. A few feet away, another group of students were tilling the new garden near the observatory. The plot is marked with a cute little sign reading, “Eat the Lawn.” See, now, kids, parents spend quite a bit of time getting their own children to avoid doing exactly that, and here you go encouraging it.

And – best of all – new and cool sculptures are popping up all over campus, thanks (I think) to the students in one of the studio art courses. One of the sculptures is a sort of tall room with red fabric walls, which blew dramatically in today’s wind. It’ll be fun to try to find the other sculptures all around campus over the next week or so.

Little Scientists

Today, Julia’s class at Northfield Nursery School had a wonderful little field trip to River Bend Nature Center in Faribault. The kids got to see some spring flowers, examine the bark on various kinds of trees, overturn logs to see what sorts of creatures were underneath, and even dip their hands in a pond that was ringing with spring peeper frogs and dotted with turtles. (We counted 16!) In short, they had a blast. Here are the little naturalists checking out the slimy, scaly things found under wet, rotting logs. (Julia is in the middle, in the sunglasses.)

Kids at River Bend

A Day Well Spent

By my count, the girls and I spent at least five hours outside in today’s gorgeous weather. In the morning, we went to campus to explore the “Council Ring” near the Rec Center.
Council Ringleaders

The girls loved climbing the stones, and then we trooped around the Lyman Lakes and threw pebbles in the water. What is it about throwing rocks in water that can captivate kids for so long?

In the afternoon, we stayed closer to home, making a trip to the neighborhood playground. This entailed my transformation into a pack mule. Click through for the annotated version.
Man Pack

Favorite Destination

My favorite run takes me from my house to the far entrance to the Carleton Arb, on Canada Avenue, near the semi-famous “Waterford Iron Bridge” over the Cannon River. The bridge is nice, but I really dig the stand of oaks on the hillside directly across from the Arb entrance. The middle tree is especially gorgeous, and today’s blue-and-white skies heightened its beauty – perfect for a few minutes of contemplation before heading back home. (Click through for a larger image.)
Canada Avenue Oaks

Quantifying the Last 24 Hours

8:00 p.m. on April 30 through 8:00 p.m. on May 1
0.33: piano burnings attended (I was there, but had to leave just before the piano was lit)
3.0: approximate bushels of laundry folded (seriously: who knew laundry baskets used the bushel as the unit of measure?)
1: nocturnal pukefests cleaned up
4: miles run (via the Arb and campus; to and from the site of the piano burning)
6: hours slept (see the “pukefest” item, above)
8: approximate minutes of piano-burning video I watched online today
32: ounces of coffee consumed
2: Carleton classes in which I gave a version of my “grants talk”
1: ties worn to work
180: approximate number of days since I last wore a tie to work
360: approximate number of comments from my kids about my wearing a tie to work
40: emails answered (minimum)

BONUS data related to Friday afternoon “bike riding”
60: minutes of total “riding bikes” time
5: number of kid-powered vehicles used
3: number of kids in the expedition
200: maximum total number of feet traveled

Biker Gang, or Stay off Carleton’s Sidewalks

I took the girls and their bikes up to campus this afternoon so that they could tool around on the relatively smooth, straight sidewalks. Neither girl crashed (though Vivi regularly steered herself onto the grass) nor were any pedestrians hit (and in fact many passing students gave the girls a friendly wave). Both were immensely happy with the experience, as these photos show. I gotta say I loved it too.

Zooming up the Sidewalk between the Libe and Laird
Bike Riders

Parked Outside Olin
Bike Riders