parenting Archives | Page 36 of 39

Apostrophe Catastrophes

Since I’m too car-shocked (like shell-shocked, only caused by car travel with children) to blog anything substantial, I’ll follow up last night’s post on Fargo-Moorhead signage atrocities with this photo of the sign at the restaurant where we had a very nice extended-family dinner on Sunday.

To answer the sign’s question, what would be good for me would be better punctuation! But I’ll make do with Julia’s inadvertently apt misspeaking: as she tries to understand the differences between commas and apostrophes, she frequently asks if a particular mark is a “high prepostrophe” or a “low prepostrophe.” This sign is definitely a high prepostrophe.

Made It

Happily, the trip up to Moorhead was nowhere near the low bar set on some previous trips. It wasn’t pleasant, exactly, but – even while continuing their streak of not napping on car trips – the girls did better this time than they’ve ever done before. We went 55 minutes before someone (Vivi, this time) asked if we were at Nonna and Bopppa’s house yet, and it was really only in the last hour (after three stops) that the girls started improvising on the theme of “I want to get out of the car!”

All in all, I give the trip up north a B-, in other words: a solid pass, but lots of improvement is siill possible. Now that we’re here, though, we can get down to the business of some vacation-esque activities like playgrounds and parks and of course celebrating Genevieve’s third birthday on Saturday!

Vacation Eve

It’s only a long weekend, really, and neither the traveling nor the bedtimes will be easy, but I’m still looking forward to our “vacation” in Moorhead, Minnesota, from Thursday through Monday. It’ll be nice to think about proposals like, “Hey, girls, let’s see if your cousins want to go to the park!” rather than the other kind, of which there have been roughly eleventy billion since my last break from work – at Christmas.

And the girls – except at bedtime – absolutely love being up there. Nonna! Boppa! Nonna and Boppa’s dog! Cousins – including two “big girls”! Novel foods! Nonna’s collection of books and videos! The excellent Moorhead library! New playgrounds!

In short, this time is much more for them than for me or for Shannon – which is one of the reasons that I insist on using the word “vacation” to describe a period of time that will be decidedly unrestful and anti-relaxing. Julia and Genevieve deserve now to look forward to and later to look back on a time that we called “vacation” – even if their Mama and Daddy will be much more tired at the end of it than they are at the beginning. The girls deserve this not only because they’re kids and they ought to have a tradition of actual summer vacations, but also because in just a few weeks, their lives as they know them will be permanently altered when Vivi goes to preschool and Julia (*gulp*) goes to kindergarten.

So: let the vacation begin!

Tunnel of Love

On Saturday, I proposed to the girls that we go to the Arb and walk through the funny little underpass that runs beneath Highway 19 and connects the Upper Arb to the Lower Arb. Much to my surprise, my two hikers agreed – their interest in taking their (Disney Princess) lanterns and my flashlight along apparently trumping any concerns over the darkness of the tunnel. I expected one or both to balk at actually walking through the tunnel once we actually got to it, but no, they both went right through – holding hands most of the way and even hugging when one stopped to admire the art on the wall. Then they went back and forth a few times.

I-Me-My (Another Facebook Fad)

(The au courant Facebook fad.)

1. What time did you get up this morning? 5:30 a.m. Half an hour later than usual.

2. How do you like your steak? Well done, with fries.

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Uhhh… It’s been a while, but I think it was The Wackness.

4. What is your favorite TV show? If I could, I’d watch 30 Rock and/or The Office, but the girls’ bedtime routine long ago destroyed any TV watching I could do.

5. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? I’d choose somewhere boreal and forested: northern Minnesota, Finland, Ontario, British Columbia, Siberia. Winters are a must.

6. What did you have for breakfast? Two homemade zucchini muffins, with a dab of butter on each one. Fantastic.

7. What is your favorite cuisine? “Cuisine,” probably Thai and Indian. “Restaurant food,” excellent pizza.

8. What foods do you dislike? I don’t dislke many foods, but I won’t eat brussels sprouts, and would avoid smelling them if I could.

9. What is your favorite place to eat? If I could eat dinner anywhere in the world tonight, it would probably be the best pizzeria in Naples. Anywhere in the U.S., the Liberty Bell Chalet in Hurley, Wisconsin. Anywhere in the Twin Cities, any Punch Pizza location. (Yeah, there’s a trend.)

10. What is your favorite dressing? A nice balsamic vinaigrette.

11. What kind of vehicle do you drive? A silver Saturn VUE.

12. What are your favorite clothes? My favorite ensemble would be jeans, long johns, hiking boots with thick wool socks, a thermal t-shirt, and a light fleece sweater. Cold-weather clothes just feel righter than anything else.

13. Where would you visit if you had the chance? Scandinavia.

14. Is the glass half full, or half empty? Usually half full.

15. Where would you want to retire? See question 5.

16. What is your favorite time of day? In the summer and fall, early evening. In the spring and winter, afternoon.

17. Where were you born? Menominee, Michigan.

18. What is your favorite sport to watch? Cross-country skiing, distance running, and especially bike racing.

19. Who do you think will not tag you back? Dunno. The whole tagging phenomenon is kinda played out, I think.

20. Who do you think will tag you back first? I have no idea.

21. Who are you most curious about their responses to this? I’d love to see my wife’s answers; some of these questions’ answers would be interesting.

22. Are you a bird watcher? I enjoy watching birds and learning about them, but I’m not a hobbyist, by any means.

23. Are you a morning person or a night person? If I could, I’d stay up till one or two a.m. every night. I love being up late, alone.

24. Do you have any pets? Sabine, an old, chunky cat.

25. Any new and exciting news you’d like to share? My oldest daughter starts kindergarten in three weeks; my younger daughter preschool at the same time. I can distinctly remember, and still feel in my arms, the first time I held each of them, newly born.

26. What did you want to be when you were little? Until I was in high school, I was sure I’d be a soldier.

27. What is your best childhood memory? I have a lot of great childhood memories, but the very best ones are all outdoors – staying in the woods at our “hunting camp,” sledding, riding bikes for hours around our farm, learning to ski…

28. Are you a cat or dog person? I like both, but I’m not sure I have the time, money, or patience for a dog right now. Or, really, a cat.

29. Are you married? Yes, and I’m much better for it.

30. Always wear your seat belt? Yes.

31. Been in a car accident? Several times.

32. Any pet peeves? Lots, but bad writing (especially by those who should know better) is a perennial one. I also loathe the way lots of people habitually respond to questions inappropriately – rudely, curtly, ironically, overly-familiarly, not at all.

33. Favorite pizza toppings? Pepperoni, green peppers, and tomatoes.

34. Favorite flower? I like the way flowers look and smell, but I’m not sure I have a favorite. I like what roses do for Shannon’s mood, though.

35. Favorite ice cream? High-quality vanilla shouldn’t be underrated.

36. Favorite fast food restaurant? Errr, I suppose something lame like McDonalds or Subway. I have never understood why there’s no real national chain for fast-food pizza by the slice.

37. How many times did you fail your driving test? None.

38. From whom did you get your last email? My last personal email (i.e., not an update email or a work-related one) came from a neighbor, announcing (for the second time in two days) that (for the second time in six months) he’s quitting the townhouse-association board.

39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Presently, a bike shop or another kind of outdoors-activity store.

40. Do anything spontaneous lately? Hmm… Outside of checking email or Facebook, no. My life isn’t structured for spontaneity right now.

41. Like your job? Yes, enormously. I am every day surprised to have such a rewarding job.

42. Broccoli? Yes, please.

43. What was your favorite vacation? I think my honeymoon – at an almost-deserted ski resort in the Upper Peninsula in late August – was great. The several trips I’ve made with Shannon to the North Shore and San Francisco have all been wonderful too.

44. Last person you went out to dinner with? Definitely Shannon – about a year ago.

45. What are you listening to right now? Genevieve, fighting sleep by having a one-sided conversation with Julia.

46. What is your favorite color? Navy blue.

47. How many tattoos do you have? None, though if or when I achieve certain life goals, that’ll change.

48. How many people are you tagging for this quiz? None.

49. What time did you finish this quiz? 8:26 p.m.

50. Coffee drinker? The more, the better, but always black.

Playgrounded

Playing at the playground is, I think, the dominant experience of summer for my girls. We don’t have a playground at home, so I think we’ve been to almost every playground in Northfield, which is only probable given that we can’t have a playset at home. The girls go – mostly with Shannon, but often with me (nine days running today, I think) – to a playground pretty much every day, and sometimes twice a day: morning at a playground on the circuit of errand-running, afternoon at the playground right by our house.

Late in July, the girls finally reached – or perhaps, I finally realized that the girls had reached – a point at which they don’t require constant monitoring, the hovering that starts with preventing toddlers from crashing and falling, proceeds to keeping more adventurous kids from having the (statistically unlikely) skull-splitting or arm-breaking accident, and eventually becomes a reflex. “We’re at the park, so I’d better stand right here, five feet from the slide.”

This is somewhat a relief, given that Shannon and I have now spent four years monitoring one or both of the girls at playgrounds near and far. God only knows how many millions of calories Shannon has burned circumnavigating the slides, the ladders, the tunnels, and the bridges. When I do wind up, by that reflex, standing right here, as I did this afternoon, the girls now say, point blank, “Daddy, we don’t need help! You can go sit down!” This is bittersweet. I like not having to climb through kid-sized tunnels or smack my head on a too-low rail, but it’s kind of a shock to get kicked off the jungle gym by your own offspring.

I’ve discovered, in the few weeks since the girls made this jump to independent playground play, that the key is to keep a literal distance from the slides and ladders. If I get too close, I’m sucked in, and I find myself, ten minutes later, standing there, dumbly watching the girls. If I stay clear at first, the powerful gravitational forces of nearby benches can do their work, and I find myself, ten minutes later, watching them, studying the clouds, even – amazingly – doing a drawing or two. I still find myself getting ready to jump up when I see Vivi tottering on some high spot or Julia choosing against all reason to go headfirst down a steep slide, but the comfort of the bench makes it easier to remember that such behavior is exactly why the whole playground is covered in mulch or rubber matting.

Seven Points of Contention

Here are a few things over which Julia and Genevieve have argued with each other or with me in the past week:

1. Whether, when they pretend to be “big kids” going to school, they can both be “vorteen,” or whether they have to be different ages, “like five for you and fourteen for me.”

2. Whether a particular crayon is more or less blue/red/brown/orange/etc. than another crayon of almost exactly the same color. This argument isn’t helped toward a peaceable conclusion by the stupid “Kid’s Choice” names Crayola is using these days.

3. Who can can lower her head further into the bathwater. (This is particularly meaningless since their heads are different sizes.)

4. Who gets to use the scooter on the trip to the park. This one rankled me because, after five minutes of disputation and compromise, the winner – Genevieve – abandoned the scooter before we reached the end of the block.

5. Whether it’s “okay” to laugh – as Vivi often does – when the other person bumps her head, stubs her toe, or is otherwise slightly hurt. (For the record, it’s not. Unless you are a grown-up and can laugh silently at a particularly comical “injury,” like Julia falling out of her kiddie chair after being cautioned roughly ten times in two minutes that she will, in fact, fall.)

6. Whether sandals are appropriate footwear for walking or playing somewhere with lots of tiny pebbles and/or sand, like, say, any playground in ten miles of our house.

7. Whether that sound outside was a car, a motorcyle, an airplane, a helicopter – or a monster.

Sunday Morning

The girls and I enjoyed a leisurely wander around downtown Northfield this morning. The weather was perfectly warm and sunny, so we were able to comfortably walk from the coffeeshop south along the river to the lovely new spot where the ducks and geese congregate, waiting for bread crumbs. After jumping off each and every stone there, we headed north on the riverwalk, crossing the river on the pedestrian and 2nd Street bridge, which proved to be excellent spots for throwing rocks and sticks into the river – attracting quite a few ducks who were instantly annoyed that the sticks weren’t edible. The girls ran, walked, skipped, hopped, danced, and even curtseyed (Julia being one of the few people in the world who can curtsey and still move forward); I mostly just walked very slowly and prevented anyone from falling down or in.

Having been walking for an hour or more by then, we stopped at a little white riverside gazebo, where we rested and enjoyed a game of Simon Says, which was amusing mostly because Vivi doesn’t yet understand that when you’re the leader, you’re supposed to try to trick the others into doing something that Simon didn’t say. She’s just too goodhearted to have figured out ways to make everyone else foul up.

Amidst all this low-key activity, it was interesting to watch downtown wake up. When we started, around nine, only the coffeeshop had anyone in it, and not even many people at that. As we walked, a few more people meandered by – a few runners and walkers, a few couples out for coffee – but things only livened up to the normal downtown hubub around eleven, as peopled streamed out of the downtown hotel and streamed into the couple restaurants offering brunch. And shortly after that, the sidewalk out front of the coffeeshop filled up with cyclists finishing their morning rides. It says something about Northfield that our resident biker gang wears spandex and rides $4,000 bicycles.

Perfect Evening

The girls wanted to hit the playground after dinner, and since it was pretty much the perfect summer evening out there, we did. Usually these outings are brief and end when someone, too tired to really have fun, loses her $#!%. Tonight’s outing couldn’t have been more the opposite. They cheerfully let me put on some sunscreen, happily put on their sandals and sunglasses, and energetically raced out the door.

Ten minutes of jogging later, we were at the playground, which was totally deserted and thus perfect for two sisters to do whatever the heck they wanted. Having forgotten my phone, my iPod, and even any paper, I had nothing to do but sit, hum “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to myself (why, I dunno), and watch Julia and Genevieve race around, giggling and laughing and having a great time.

After half an hour of fun on the ladders and slides – easily the longest they’ve ever played at a playground without my intervention – they switched to playing “Princesses and Monster,” which entailed more running, climbing, and sliding but also a good uptick in shrieking. The monster, it seemed, kept capturing one of the sisters and locking her in the playset tunnel, which was actually an oven. The other sister, luckily, could always rescue the inmate, allowing them both to flee to the top of the “castle” and then down the slide. Shriek and repeat.

After another fifteen minutes of this, the girls abruptly decided they were very thirsty, so we headed for home – which required us to slip past the monster’s hiding spot at the edge of the park. Luckily, Vivi found a long stick that she could wield as a sword (“dord”) to poke the monster, which was – Julia informed us – “made of beef that’s very soft and new.” We dispatched the monster and made our way back to the house.

Halfway there, we saw that our neighbor had just returned from a nearly month-long trip overseas. Julia and Genevieve have sorely missed the six-year-old member of the family, so we ran the rest of the way, getting to our shared entry just before they went inside. The girls’ friend was terribly jetlagged, but still excited to give them their presents: identical sets of Hello Kitty pencils, notepads, and erasers. J & G thanked her profusely, then went inside to enjoy a well-deserved snack – five Wheat Thins and about ten glasses of ice water for each kid – and get ready for bed. What a perfect evening.

What About Old Mother Hubbard?

You never know what you’ll find in the cupboard with a three-year-old around.

Kidboard from Christopher Tassava on Vimeo.

13 Things That Make Summer Better

About halfway through the summer, there are quite a few things worth mentioning as being notably good.

1. When we’re not having weird weather, we’re having very nice weather – even spectacular weather, like today. (Julia took this shot the other day.)

2. Wheat ales improve every dinner, even one made from scratch from CSA farm produce.

3. Facebook has put me in contact with an amazing number of interesting people who are doing a wide range of fascinating things this summer.

4. We’re just 146 days away from the first day of winter.

5. The Carleton library has an enormous collection of art books, which includes a lot of wonderful folios of master drawings that are perfect for perusing.

6. Every time I bike past the golf course, I enjoy the thought (but not [yet?] the act) of shrieking “Fore!” just as some duffer swings his club.

7. The 96th Tour de France – a fantastic edition.

8. Open Hands Farm is furnishing us with a ridiculous amount of delicious fresh produce this summer.

9. I have the time and some of the skill to do some drawing almost every day.

10. The girls, more often then not, are up for a bike ride.

11. The green, green, green Arb.

12. Finally being back in good-enough shape to run for an hour without either my knees or my lungs giving out.

13. The girls are having a great summer with Shannon.

Masters of the Playground

One of the nicest things about the summer so far has been watching Julia and Genevieve apply their increasing physical abilities to new challenges, from riding bikes to tackling new playground equipment. Julia’s never been terribly adventurous when faced with a new kind of ladder or slide, but her reluctance is trumped almost immediately nowadays by her sister’s eagerness. Vivi is almost always ready to zoom up a novel ladder or plunge down an unknown slide, and once Julia sees “my little sister” succeeding, she has to try it too – whereupon she finds that she too can do it.

Friday, we hit a new park, a playground behind one of Northfield’s elementary schools. The play structure was fantastic: huge, complicated, mixing easy stuff like bridges and steps with difficult stuff like twisty tunnel slides and steep climbing walls. The strangest thing we found was a “ladder tunnel” – a cylinder with wall made from a grid of that grippy playground rope. On discovering it, Julia took one look and walked away, shaking her head and muttering, “I’m not trying that.” Five minutes later, though, Genevieve found it and instantly, intuitively figured it out: duck through the low opening, reach up for the highest horizontal rope you can, and then “pull-lift” (as we say) to get your feet up. Repeat, repeat, repeat, and then step carefully over to the platform. By the time she had reached the top, Julia was back, watching. “Oh, I guess I will try it,” she said, as Vivi crowed, “Wook, guys, I did it!” Sure enough, Julia made it up too. I was proud of them for trying it, and happy to see them succeeding – in large part because once they master a new piece of equipment like this, they do it over and over for ten minutes or more (which is an eternity for a 2- and a 5-year-old).

Vivi’s Towering Talent

Vivi, far more than Julia ever has, delights in blocks – laying them end to end for yards, using them to build elaborate “houses,” stacking them into towers as tall as she is, and of course knocking them down. On Tuesday, I came home to a massive “house” of Duplo blocks: a little structure with a few Duplo people inside and entirely ringed by a fence or wall that enclosed about six square feet. It was more like Southfork than anything, and it wasn’t a bad little construction project for a 2.94 year old kid.

A few hours later, after bath, while Julia was working her way through a few Disney Princess coloring pages, Vivi pulled out a different box of blocks, retrieved a sturdy book on which to build, and put up this complex of towers, which she called – inexplicably – “the funnel.” She carefully used an especially important alphabet block to decorate “the funnel.” I love it. It’s a beautiful structure.

Cinderella, Princess of Color(ing)

Julia has been on a tear lately with the Disney Princess coloring pages, which are available online for the cost of printing. At this juncture, I conservatively estimate we’ve spent $27.32 printing literally scores of these pictures, which Julia colors with incredible care, skill, and enthusiasm (and which Vivi colors if she feels like it.)

Lately, feeling perhaps somewhat under-challenged by regular old coloring, Julia has taken to doing research. After finding a picture worth coloring (and there are many, many criteria which can rule a picture out, such as incoherent lines that don’t show up where they should), she gathers up a few of her many princess-related storybooks, finds a relevant image, and then colors the picture to match – say, Cinderella in the confection below, or Sleeping Beauty in one of her other personae (Aurora and Briar Rose, of course).

The Most Epic Race

Taking a cue from the jokers at Versus – with their ultimate-fighting commercials and “Lance vs. the World” hyping of this year’s Tour de France – Julia and Genevieve decided to stage their own race on the new bike path this week: Julia on her bike, Vivi on her feet. The result? A tie, which they strive to arrange through all sorts of means. Thankfully, the rest of the race was pretty amusing.

Julia couldn’t get herself going on the slight uphill, so Vivi helpfully gave her a Tour de France-style push start: