Category: parenting

Lazy Sunday

Today was a near perfect autumn day. Though I’d have liked to have done a hard ride on some local trails, instead I headed out with Julia on a big loop that included a little dirt in the Arboretum

before stopping at the Carleton library (where she checked out two Shakespeare plays – wha?) and then heading downtown to browse the art shop (cardstock for her new greeting-card project slash business) and bookstore ([this book on the famous Lewis chessmen](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23848067-ivory-vikings) looks great) and get a snack at the coffee shop. Small business Sunday! While doing all that, we chatted about everything: school, work, college, stores, food, biking, being a kid…

On our way home we rode through a street-construction project, which is always good for a little frisson of riding, harmlessly, where you supposedly shouldn’t. Six miles of east, fun, relaxing outdoors time.

March Gladness

The girls love playing basketball, which is great, and that love of playing it has lately extended into loving to watch it too. We attended a bunch of Northfield high-school games this winter and even went to Minneapolis to see a Timberwolves game in February.

This week, they’ve been getting into the NCAA men’s tournament, which they both simply call “Marchmadness,” as if it were actually a different sport than basketball. We filled out tournament brackets, which was fun and a little bit educational, and have watched bits of a few first-round games, including both of the overtime periods that Little Rock needed to beat Purdue.

All day today, I looked forward to sitting on the sofa tonight with the girls and watching whatever game came on. In one of those all-too-rare cases of parenting where the reality matches the expectation, we did just that, taking in Stephen F. Austin’s upset of West Virginia. The game was full of hard defense, good shooting by SFA’s amazingly-bearded Thomas Walkup

Mar 18, 2016; Brooklyn, NY, USA; Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks forward Thomas Walkup (middle) drives to the basket against West Virginia Mountaineers players Elijah Macon (45) , Esa Ahmad (23) and Jonathan Holton (1) in the first half in the first round of the 2016 NCAA Tournament at Barclays Center. Mandatory Credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports
Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks forward Thomas Walkup. March 18, 2016; Brooklyn, NY, USA; mandatory credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports

and enough steals by SFA to make WVU look like tourists who had wandered into a pickpockets’ convention. We also had an unnecessary bowl of popcorn, some fizzy drinks, and lots of crazy conversation. It was a blast.

Parenting by Bike

If there is one downside to my love of winter cycling – and there isn’t – it would be that my girls can’t join me out on the snowy trails. So as bummed as I am to see winter go (especially a short, mild winter like this one), I’m equally happy to go riding again with the girls, and even more so after we had so much fun last summer.

My spring cycling fever spiked on Friday when I learned that Northfield’s in-town mountain bike trails were scheduled to open for the season on Saturday.

But! When I told the girls this news, Julia said that she was too nervous to ride the trails again – and specifically that she was afraid of falling off the bridges at the trail. (This happened once last year, so it’s a semi-real fear.) I didn’t say much except that I hoped she’d change her mind, and went riding by myself on Saturday.

Sure enough, this morning she announced that she did indeed want to go riding – which made Genevieve upset because she couldn’t come along, being already committed to going to a party. Kids!

I calmed Vivi down by promising to take them next weekend to a nearby mountain bike park (what a burden!), and then Julia and I hit the trails.
Shooting the gap

She did great, riding the bridges without any problems and re-conquering several features that she’d learned last year. She even insisted on posing for a picture:
Semi-scenic overlook

Altogether we rode ten miles in about 90 minutes, which is a great first outing of the season. In addition to the planned trip to other trails next weekend, we decided at dinner to sign up for a short gravel race near Northfield in May, and are thisclose to convincing the non-cyclist in the family to let them do a MTB race in the fall. Yay bikes!

Whatever Floats Your State

Vivi’s fourth-grade social studies project was a “report” on one of the United States of America. Kids could choose among various forms for this report, and she chose to make a “float,” which is in principle and reality a pretty cool alternative to a poster or even a paper. For whatever reason, she selected Idaho as her topic, which was nice since – after two trips out there – I feel like I know a little bit about the Gem State. It’s called the Gem State, for instance.

Predictably, the effort of assembling this float was a bit overwhelming for my smart little perfectionist. Some tears were shed on the way to making the final product resemble the image in her head. I tried to avoid doing much to help her, and wound up mostly just scaling back some of her overly ambitious ideas. But the final product was pretty neat, displaying all the required info (capital, date of joining the Union, nickname, state bird, etc.) as well as some other cool stuff about Idaho and a very realistic paper potato.

Idaho Float
Idaho Float

Scareading

For several months now, the girls have been encouraging me to read some Neil Gaiman books. Okay, maybe *luring* me into etc. etc.
Creepy Tomes

Earlier this week I finally picked up *Coraline*, expecting to read a few chapters before bed. Three hours later I finished it, thoroughly creeped out.

After giving myself a few days to recover, I started *The Graveyard Book* on Friday evening. I was able to stop reading at midnight, which gave me the pleasures of some creepy dreams that night and of enjoying a little whiskey while finishing it tonight. If anything, Bod’s ordeals were even scarier than Coraline’s, though nothing can top this exchange between Coraline and her eye-buttoned other mother:
I Put Her Back

*Shudder*.

How Well Do You Know Your Dad?

I couldn’t resist this meme-y questionnaire that was floating around Facebook, and luckily the girls were into it, too. No real surprises here, which is probably good! (Neither one mentioned beer in any response!)

J = Julia, age 11, sixth grade
G = Genevieve, age 9, fourth grade

1. What is something I always say to you?
J: “How was your day?”
G: “I love you!”

2. What makes me happy?
J: Biking
G: Biking

3. What makes me sad?
J: Not biking
G: When I’m sad.

4. How do I make you laugh?
J: “By doing weird stuff.”
G: “By tickling and being super strange.”

5. What was I like as a child?
J: A fat baby
G: Chubby

6. How old am I?
J: 42
G: 42

7. How tall am I?
J: 5’10”
G: 5’10”

8. What is my favorite thing to do?
J: Bike
G: Bike and snuggle with me.

9. What do I do when you’re not around?
J: Bike
G: Bike

10. What am I really good at?
J: Biking
G: Cheering me up

11. What is something I’m not good at?
J: Punishing Genevieve
G: Getting mad [“You never get angry.”]

12. What do I do for a job?
J: Grantwriter
G: Grant writer at Carleton

13. What is my favorite food?
J: Pizza
G: Pizza

14. What do you enjoy doing with me?
J: Biking
G: Biking

Blue Belted

Today the girls did their tae kwon do testing for their blue belts. They had not had as long a training session as usual, and thanks to busy evenings and snow days had also missed a couple classes, but as the test approached they buckled down to learn everything they needed to know. As the only purple belts in this testing cohort, they did all of the various phases of testing with each other, which was fun to see. They nailed it! I’m so proud of them for their hard physical and mental work!

One Steps
One Steps

Blue Monday Art (Guest Post by the Girls)

**JULIA**: What a great morning: Muffins and art and snagging the window chairs at Blue Monday. It made me appreciate how pretty and quiet Northfield is on a Sunday morning. The red Raleigh outside the window had “Townie”written all over it. Northfield is a bike town, even in January. I have to admit, that bike is nice, but the owner would get more admiring glances if she rode a Salsa Beargrease. 🙂

Julia's version

**GENEVIEVE**:
A perfect morning always starts with a sketch, and a beautiful Northfield scene in the background lit a match of ideas. And so my drawing began there. The bike immediately caught my interest. It was my kind of challenging sketch: complex and not too colorful. Of course, I would have put more effort into the art (although I put plenty into this one) if it were a green and black Salsa Beargrease!

Genevieve's version

Quiet on the Set

Tonight I spent three hours in downtown Northfield with Julia, waiting to see if her choir would have a part in a movie that’s being filmed in our fair city. It was both interesting and dull – the former, because, turns out, making movies is the latter.
Testing Lights

Julia was a trouper, though. We were first supposed to report at 5:30. When we arrived, we learned that the choir scene had been pushed back to after 7:00, and before 10:00. We went home and returned at 7. The group received some instructions from a (crabby) production assistant and practiced “Silent Night” for a while.

Practice

Then they waited. Outside, inside. Standing, sitting. Across the street, on the set. In a big group, in little pairs. Shivering, warming up. I had a coffee. And three cookies. Then some cocoa and two more cookies.

Meanwhile the director ran the same scene over and over and *over* – a couple actors come up the sidewalk, cross the street, and enter Bridge Square while townspeople mill behind them. The throng of townies shrank each time they ran through the scene.

Finally, around 9:15, he got it, and we received word that we needed to stay till 11 for *our* scene. Julia rolled her eyes and pronounced herself “done with this!” Riding home, she said she was a little bummed that she didn’t get to be in the choir scene, but that it still has been fun to see a movie bring made. I’m glad she saw the silver lining in the massive light reflectors.

Word Girls

Being someone who makes a living with words, I’m very happy to see that my girls are word-lovers and lovers of manipulating words, too. Tonight was classic: I spent a half hour quizzing Julia for the middle-school spelling bee tomorrow night (she’s so nervous! so excited!) – infrastructure, esoteric, boycott, kaftan – and later fifteen minutes giving Vivi “hard words” to look up in the dictionary she got for Christmas: hibernal, speculative, theoretical, paschal, vernal…

Snow Elves

Every winter, our townhouse association’s plowing service creates a huge pile of snow at the end of a cul-de-sac down the block. For years, my girls have loved playing on “Mt. Sunset” – making sledding runs, carving out caves, building tunnels. It’s a seasonal playground.

Every winter till this one, I’ve needed to go help them with the work, especially cutting into the compacted snow. (Other dads like Todd and Dave have helped too.)

This winter, though, is different. The girls don all their winter gear, grab our shovels, and trundle down the block, maybe meeting friends there. They return 60 or 90 minutes later, sweaty and exhilarated and thirsty, having enlarged an elaborate set of tunnels and ramps. It’s marvelous.

Mt. Sunset

Ballin’

I raced home from my race on Saturday so that I could go to Vivi’s first basketball tournament, which was being held conveniently at one of Carleton’s gyms.

Busy gym
Busy gym

I missed her first game, in which her team demolished its opponent, 40-something to 20-something, but I did get to see her second and third games: a loss to the best team in the tournament and then an exciting win over a much more evenly matched team. Throughout, the girls played hard and visibly enjoyed themselves, which was wonderful.

I felt a little weird being so fixed on Vivi whenever she was on the court. I suppose it’s just being a parent, but I couldn’t help but only watch her in action, even if there was more action elsewhere on the court. She did a great job playing defense, which she’s already identified as a strength and which she really likes. Being one of the smallest girls on the court, she couldn’t rebound too much, but my god she could dog an opponent with or without the ball. It was fun to see her strip the ball and run

In the last game, she had a particularly good play when she stole the ball from her mark near midcourt, ran up to the left wing, then smoothly passed the ball to a teammate who passed it around to another girl on the right wing, who got the bucket. Excellent team play.

Their effort over the course of the day earned the team second place in the tournament, and you haven’t seen grinning till you’ve seen ten fourth grade girls getting their medals.

Getting her medal
Getting her medal

 

Dad-Bod Positivity

We’re eating dinner. I tell the girls that I put up their school pictures in my office and that I love them both. Each girl says she doesn’t really like her photo. I say that’s too bad because they’re great shots.

2015

I ask whether they like the way they look in real life. They both say they do, and I add that I like the way I look too. Julia looks at me incredulously and says, “Well, you obviously have bad judgment there.”