Blowing & Drifting

Exactly midway through our pre-dinner bike ride around the block tonight, Vivi hopped off her trike, climbed on up on this retaining wall, and lay down on the grass. “Vivi,” I asked, “what are you doing?” She looked over at me and said matter-of-factly, “I’m doing a sunbathe!” I couldn’t disagree.

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Julia improved on my shot of the girls at the downtown coffeeshop on one of our Saturday-morning bagel outings with this excellent rendering. The lights are realistic, if somewhat (say, 1000%) oversized in relation to the three of us at our table. Vivi was wearing heart-kneed pants; I was not holding my coffee mug over my [...]

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The girls are into a hilarious (and occasionally annoying) phase of choosing, re-choosing, and re-re-choosing their pajamas every night. Tonight after bath, for instance, Julia put on a crazy pair of purple jammies that attract her with a complicated Ariel-the-mermaid motif but repel her with scratchy synthetic fabric and tight elastic cuffs. For her part, [...]

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Julia is semi-obsessed with the cafeteria at her elementary school. More than once in the past week, we’ve had to look up the menu on the school website and talk about all the options. And since Julia is Julia, this has led to art: a drawing of kids getting their food. It’s pretty accurate. You [...]

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Genevieve drew this portrait of me last Sunday. The text reads as follows:
To Dad
By Genna
Love Vivi
This is you!
And this is me
She didn’t draw herself into the picture, though. She also said that I’m wearing a brown dress, not pants and a shirt, and then laughed at how crazy that idea was.

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The temperature hit about 45° F here on Sunday afternoon, which thus might well have been our last moment for winter fun. We made most of it, building two snowmen with our neighbor friend (who just learned how to do rabbit ears) while a cardinal serenaded us from the tip top of a nearby tree. [...]

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Crap. I shouldn’t’ve been Facebooking all this time. I never did fold the laundry.
Good lord. That pile is taller than I am. And there’s more in the dryer. Time-management FAIL.
At least it’s mostly sheets.
Sonofabeech! Two sheets, and now nothing but the girls’ tiny little socks. Omigod. I’m going to get carpal tunnel syndrome.
Cheezis. These goddamn [...]

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Adding to my unintentional but now tripartite (part 1 and part II) chronicle of the spring melt here in Northfield, another compare and contrast.
The girls, our next-door-neighbor, and I built big snowman (probably a good 5′5″) in the backyard on Christmas Day. Below, he appears on the day of his creation and this morning, on what might [...]

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Just before dinner today, our next-door-neighbors knocked on our door. They’re a Japanese family: the father teaches at Carleton while the mother stays home; the daughter, a frequent backyard playmate for Julia and Genevieve, is one year older than Julia. The little girl was dressed in a spectacular red kimono (and orange Crocs!) that was positively [...]

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Overheard, 6:15 p.m.
Vivi, pointing at the easel. “Julia, what you tryin’ to show me over dere?”
Julia: “I was just showing you the word ‘vowel,’ and that it starts with the letter ‘v’.”
Vivi: “Oh. I a growd-up, so I don’t hear you good. My ears don’t work.”
Me: “Genevieve, most grown-ups’ ears work fine. It’s just me [...]

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Along with some friends, the girls and I enjoyed a long walk in the Arb on Saturday afternoon, soaking up the sun and visiting a huge igloo that some Carleton students put up a few months ago. As Julia’s posture shows, these photos are from before the walk and after it.

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As any book on raising kids will tell you, all kids have imaginary friends. Julia invented a few, or invested actual stuffed animals with fully fleshed-out personalities and histories, though she’s always preferred setting up complicated scenarios based on a book, a story, a TV show, or whatever. (See “Nativity Scenes, the Neverending Power of…,” [...]

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Julia’s facility with words has always been strong; she was talking as well at two or three as many five-year-olds (including some of her current classmates). Since starting kindergarten, she has, as we expected, rapidly acquired and improved her writing and reading skills. She’s always loved to draw pictures, so being able to label some [...]

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The four girls who wait for the bus each morning – my kindergartner, two neighbors who are in first grade, and the preschooler hanger-on – have discovered that the big old snowbank at the stop makes an excellent slide, and that sliding makes the long, cold wait for Bus #14 less cold and long.

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Perhaps because of the nationalism on display at the Olympics, Genevieve’s preschool class made flags today. I rather like her flag, and her flagwaving technique.

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