Blowing & Drifting

Before doing her homework tonight, Vivi paused and looked up at me. “Sometimes, I wonder about things. Like, why are the only eye colors blue, green, brown, and black? Or why is hair always black, brown, yellow or red?” I told her those were good questions, and that she could become a scientist to study [...]

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Last night, in the throes of a meltdown, Vivi yelled at me, “I wish that children could pick their parents! I wish they could, because then I would never have picked you to be my dad! Never, never, never!” I took it as a sign of my maturation as a parent that this didn’t make [...]

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Last night, the family went to the girls’ elementary school for the annual open house, where we met their teachers, explored their new rooms, distributed the required school supplies, ran into friends everywhere, and generally soaked up that wonderfully expectant “fall is coming!” vibe. A few pictures:    

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Shockingly, Genevieve graduated from kindergarten today. Parental surprise at the passage of time is cliche, of course, but there you go. I remember – “like it was yesterday” – carrying her from the delivery room to the maternity ward. And here she was in her dress and mortarboard, reading her poem about the cat. I’m [...]

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In what must be her weirdest obsession yet, Julia is fascinated right now by being cross-eyed. Several times a day, I’ll catch her staring at the tip of her index finger as she slowly draws it to her nose. She tells us about spending recess practicing going cross-eyed, about how one of her friends can [...]

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Today, I served as a chaperone on Julia’s second-grade field trip, an outing to River Bend Nature Center in Faribault. She went there during both years of preschool, so it’s a familiar place to go with classmates. This field trip was notable in that Julia was joined by two of her best friends, A & [...]

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Julia was lucky (and, I say, talented) enough to be chosen to read her “color poem” at her elementary school’s annual “Beyond Words” literacy fair tonight. We’ve been to the fair for three straight years now, and while the event never fails to be anything less than amazing, the poetry reading is the highlight: the [...]

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Vivi loves to do word-find puzzles, but she got a little bored with them the other day, so she decided to make one for me. It was difficult.

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Genevieve is not happy standing still. Even “waiting” for the kindergarten bus to arrive entails chalking on the sidewalk, singing and dancing, and racing up and down on her scooter. She even invented a new game for us. She would start at the bottom of the driveway and try to scooter all the way up [...]

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The first day of school was a non-event for Julia, who was excited about second grade but accustomed to school, and a huge honking deal for Genevieve, who was reluctant to get too excited about KINDERGARTEN! Right up until Monday night, she kept telling us that she didn’t want to go to kindergarten. I expected [...]

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The other day, I showed off the cover of the book that Julia made for me for Father’s Day. It is awesome. Here are the four pages inside. Click through to Flickr to read each one, if the images aren’t big enough here. It’s worth it.

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Julia’s first-grade class had a little picnic today to celebrate the end of the school year. At the end, her teacher lined up all the kids for a class photo, and then invited all the first-graders’ siblings to join in, too. Julia decided Vivi needed a little touching up before the big group shot.

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Julia’s first-grade class has been working on poetry this spring. Here are two she brought home today (all spelled and capitalized here as she did in the originals): Amur leopords thirty left dissaperring save them stop taking them spots brownish orange My penny I found it in my yard brown scuffed Aberham Liclon My sister [...]

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I was busy today. How busy? So busy I didn’t have a chance to update my social-media status until after I got home. A day without a couple updates is like a day without coffee – hardly worth the trouble. In an effort to partly rectify this horrible situation, here are six status updates I [...]

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An excerpt of Julia’s study of various animals during her first grade class’s run-up to their zoo field trip. Somehow this wolf’s grin is even scarier than a real wolf’s growl.

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