Blowing & Drifting

Yesterday, Julia spontaneously decided yesterday to try the potty chair - twice! - and even went once. We're hoping (but not believing) that this might stick. We've been trying on and off to remind Julia about the party that we will have when she's in underwear and not having accidents, so yesterday as she was trying to go, I said, "And when you're all potty trained, you get to have a..." She looked at me blankly, so I went, "P-p-p-p-p..." and she blurted out happily, "Preschool!" So her mind's in the right place.

(Coda Since I've been sitting on a related anecdote for a while without figuring out a good way to use it, I might as well simply include it here. Often when I ask Julia about what she expects to do in preschool, she will list a few items such as "toys" and "reading books," and then add "playing math!" I'm glad she already has this attitude towards it.)

Someday I'll write about something besides kids, but not today. Though the major theme of the weekend was "Julia's third birthday," it's minor theme was "talking." Julia had her usual array of hilarious comments, like saying, as she played a board game with my mom and my mom's friend Jan, "I fink Jan is fascinating!" The verbal high point was hit the previous night, though, when she invented a bedtime song called "Baby Window." It went something like this (and had a melody!):

Baby window, don't be scared
Close your eyes and go to sleep
Baby window, it's time for bed
Baby window, close the shades
Baby window, no talking or calling
I'll check on you later

When asked, she provided a coyly ambiguous answer - practically Dylanesque - as to what or who "baby window" was, confirming that it was a small window and saying that it was a window from which a baby was looking.

Genevieve didn't compose an original song, but made her first discernibly meaningful word-like sound. We'd been trying for a week or so to get her to say either "numnum" for more food or "mama" for, you know. At breakfast and lunch, she made a sound halfway between those two utterances, so we felt like we were on the right track. She gleefully set us straight later in the afternoon when she ripped the corner off a magazine cover, jammed it in her mouth, and shrieked, "Numnumnum!" She did the same thing at dinner when service got too slow, so I think we can book this as a long step toward speaking. Whether she ever gets in a word when her sister's around is another matter.

Phase II of Julia's birthday was long (her sister woke up at 5:30 a.m.), filled with treats (coffee cake for morning snack, cupcake for dinner dessert), replete with presents (from Grandma; Grandma's friend Jan; and the Netherlanders - Aunt Beth, Uncle Dan, and Cousin Rebecca), and most importantly soaked in fun: the requisite round of "Happy Birthday," a delicious birthday dinner made by Mama, playing games inside and running around outside with Grandma, wearing a new fairy skirt to dinner, and on and on.

A certain amount of toddler acquisitiveness with the presents (running to get the next gift before remembering to thank the giver of the last one) was more than balanced by her usual charmingtude. The high point came late, at dinner. Wearing her new fairy skirt over her regular clothes, Julia was very impressed by and curious about the fact that the adults - even Mama! - were drinking wine, something she's never seen at table before. Naturally, she had to join in, pretending that her ice water was in fact wine "made fwum oranges, not grapes." After draining her cup, she banged it down on the table and announced, in what I hope will not prefigure any statement made as a 16-, 21-, or 25-year-old, "I just finished my wine! Get me down and take off my skirt!"

A few minutes ago, my lovely and hyper-capable wife said, "Quicksand played a really big part in my childhood. It seems like they were always getting caught in it on Gilligan's Island."

(For what it's worth, here is the story that elicited this disclosure.)

I dunno if it's spring fever or what, but there's wacky stuff to be seen on campus these days. Foremost, there are a ludicrous number of students stumping around campus on crutches and casts. I know it's not just the same couple of injured athletes because those krazy kids all have casts in different colors, and because, after the big convocation last week, the entire Carleton community gathered for a free lunch, and at one point I counted seven different people with crutches. The prof with whom I was dining thought that the hobbled were almost all frisbee and rugby players. That may be true, but I'm walking more carefully. I think it might be the squirrels.

More ephemeral oddities abound, as well. One of the senior art projects that's now up on the lawn outside the art building resembles a giant hamster wheel, lending a treadmillenian aspect to the view down to Lyman Lakes. But walking into the library yesterday, I passed a woman wearing a strapless dress over a t-shirt. Huh? And just this afternoon, down in the men's room - the skeeviness of which I have described previously - I ran into a guy in his stocking feet. Dude, the floor is damp with rain and who knows what else: wear your Keens.

While Shannon took Genevieve up to Minneapolis for Gigi's tests yesterday, I stayed home with Julia. Only we didn't stay home; we went downtown, with me pedaling my trusty bike and Julia riding gamely in our bike trailer, the same trailer that up to now she's never liked, even on a short ride around the block.

Downtown, we first hit the coffeeshop for a snack. Owing to where the bike racks are, this required Julia to walk past her nemesis, Hot Dog Man, an oversized mural painted on the wall next to the hot-dog stand. Though she tried to walk while covering her eyes with her hands, she had to sneak a glance (as she does every time), and discovered (as she does every time) that HDM ain't that bad. Stumbling into passers-by, she exclaimed, "I yike Hot Dog Man now! And I even yike the wig!"

At the coffeeshop - locus of our small-town world - we chatted with a friend, chose a cranberry-orange scone (not the "chocowit chip" one someone preferred), and then went outside to find a seat on the old movie-theatre seats along the sidewalk. The flip-up seats were a bit confusing, but once she got situated, she was fine. Until a Carleton student sat down next to her, inspiring some stare-straight-ahead anxiety and reminding me of how terrifying it was, as a little kid, to have to sit next to someone I didn't know. I turned Julia toward me so that she couldn't see him, which allowed her to resume chomping away on her rice cake, packing away the craisins,  and slurping big draughts of ice water. Just as she was finishing her food, his powerfully bad smell hit me. Maybe the showers on his floor aren't working too well, or soap's too expensive, ore the sheen on his cut-off shorts was dirt, not the fabric's finish. It was all I could do to down the rest of the scone and, as Julia says, "Hit the woad."

On our way to the library, we swung through the bookstore, and Julia discovered a very cool book on pirates, albeit one aimed at tween boys, not almost-three-year-old girls. She was more curiously perplexed by it than anything, but she actually rather liked the picture of Blackbeard, especially the matches in his beard. When we finally left and went across the street to the library, Julia announced with glee, "Daddy, I turned into Bwackbeard!" She then pretended to be the fearsome pirate for the rest of the adventure: while doing puzzles at the kid's table, while talking to her favorite library volunteer, and over a long walk along city streets to the point (6/10ths of a mile east) where she decided to get back in the trailer for the quick ride home for lunch. She assumed some other identities, such as her alter-ego "Mulia," a puppy named Stick Bark Twig, and Elmo, but most of the time she was just "a nice Bwackbeard. I don't steal fings. I don't go to jail." If I'd had a jolly roger to fly from the trailer, I would have.

Four hours later, when she woke up from her consequent, monumentally-long nap, she immediately and cheerily announced, "Daddy, I'm still Bwackbeard! I'm still a pirate! Arr!"

It was almost too much fun, this weekend. One highlight was Genevieve's repeated attempts to crawl up and over my legs. She wiped out a few times, but kept at it, and was markedly better by mid-afternoon on Sunday than she had been on Saturday morning. Why did the baby climb the legs? To get to the other side.

Another highlight, was Julia's stopping, midway through an exhausted walk up to bed, to pick up a stray 3x5-inch card and say, with a perfect combination of toddler stream-of-consciousness and Julian obsession-with-sleep, "That would not be a good bwanket for me. It's too small. My feet would stick out."

Julia had a fantastic time at "tumbling class" today, racing around in circles for a good ten minutes, running down the trampoline track (after a pause to pint out the "www" in the URL of the tramp maker' logo) for another thirty, and then doing assorted "actions" (think "kick leg in air, then fall down" - repeatedly) until it was time to go. On the way into class, an older kid, leaving after his session, stopped us to demonstrate, in that guileless preteen way, his ability to do handstands. Julia's jaw literally dropped open.

After all that fun, she was naturally as hungry as a bear, and ate multiple helpings of the (very healthy) stuff on offer. After her fourth or fifth plate full of food (and after sopping up some excess ketchup with a scrap of hamburger bun, like some sort of pint-sized lumberjack) she looked at me grumpily and said, "Daddy, you pushed in my chair too tight!" I looked down her bulging belly and said, laughing, "No, honey, it's your tummy that got big from so much food!" She laughed at how silly that was.

Save for my other-day post about that race here in Northfield in March, I haven't written much about skiing lately, for the obvious reason that there isn't much skiing to write about. Thankfully, the Norwegians were, at least a few weeks ago, still doing a bit of racing, holding one giant race way up north and, even later, a big hillclimb. This latter competition, the Horgi Oppmore or less "Up Horgi," as near as I can tell), was a 10km freestyle race, of which nearly three-quarters was a 7300-meter climb up a pretty substantial ski hill (vertical distance: 853 meters - just over a half mile).

The most interesting thing about the race is that Therese Johaug, a young Norwegian racer who won a shock bronze in the 30km marathon at the world championships in March, not only dominated the women's field (besting the second-place female racer by nearly seven minutes) but skied with many of the world's best male racers to finish seventh overall - five minutes down to the winner, former World Cup racer Kristen Skjeldal, but just a minute down on ironman Anders Aukland and more than three minutes up on Tor Arne Hetland, who has won numerous world cup races, a world championships or two, and an Olympic gold. Not bad company to keep!

Johaug, if she can avoid overtraining, should have an exceptional future: to be winning the marathon as a teenager indicates that she has a ridiculously good endurance base. She also has an idiosyncratic ski technique that's kinda funny to see - her head bobs and her arms jerk, but she goes fast. Horgi Opp, like the killer hillclimb that ended the inaugural Tour de Ski last January, suggests that maybe cross-country skiing is ready for some new racing formats, such as a modified pursuit race which pits men and women against each other directly, perhaps through a handicapped start, and the first racer over the line wins.

For at least a year, this house has been forlornly occupying a lot in the pricier subdivision next to ours.

Last week, a for-sale sign popped up, perhaps extruded by the piles of unused construction materials (jesus, but a lot of 3M products go into a new house) and waste (jesus, but a lot of wood gets thrown out). Befitting my education and station, I'm opposed in principle, practice, and pocketbook to McMansions like this one, and especially to starter castles, like this one, that sit on the worst lot in the neighborhood (a lot that, still empty, is the big blank spot across the street from the green arrow in this Google Maps shot). Still, it saddens me to see the house sitting hollow and now for sale. Someone had big dreams for this place; now they'll be lucky to make a few cents on the tens of thousands of dollars they sank into it.

Last week, my favorite jazz group, the Bad Plus released a great new album, PROG, which features several great original compositions, including "Physical Cities," which ranks in their best five originals, and some of their patented cover songs, such as a gripping interpretation of Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World." (You can hear some of the tracks on the band's Myspace page, or read about their goings-on on their official blog, Do the Math. (Get it? Bad Plus? Do the Math?)

I just uploaded a mess of recent photos to Flickr.

Shannon summarized the excellent day, and the wonderful weekend, already, so I'll just note two "fings," as Julia would say. (The girl talks like a 30-year old, which I suppose makes sense give n whom she listens to all day: during one conversation this afternoon, she prefaced some statements by saying, "One more fing, Daddy..."

First and foremost, Genevieve started to crawl on Saturday. By Sunday afternoon she could zoom across a six-foot gap in no time at all - and certainly much less time than Julia needed to get away. Her default destination is always Julia, and her default goal is always just to get what Julia's playing with.

Second, Julia capped the day (which reached its nadir around five p.m., at which time a substantial tantrum started) with a wonderful question. Tucking her into her bed, I whispered, "Good night, honey." With her head already on her pillow and her eyes already closed, she whispered back, "Daddy, is this Happy Mother's Day good night?" I told her it was.

Fresh off the digital camera, a photo of the big toad that lives behind our house - probably in a nice cool burrow under one of the shrubs in the garden, right where Shannon weeds.  This specimen is big, about the size of a hockey puck, but probably twice as thick. I can't tell, from my few minutes snapping photos, whether it's an American, Canadian, or Great Plains today. But whatever the species, s/he's  just out there, ridding the world of bugs. And my god, the warts.

Julia: "Daddy, do you yike your coffee?"
Me: "Yes, I sure do."
J: "You drink dark brown coffee and Mama drinks yight brown coffee. Why?"
M: "Because Mama puts milk in her coffee. That makes it brown. Some people put milk and sugar in their coffee, which makes it even lighter brown, like the color of my shirt."
J (looking at my ratty tan t-shirt): "Daddy, you look pretty today!"
M (laughing): "Thank you, honey. You look pretty, too."
J: "Daddy, you look pretty as a chocowit bar!"
M (laughing harder): "I do? Why?
J: "Because you have a nice yight brown shirt on, yike chocowit!"
M (running to the kitchen to grab some paper and a pen to write all this down): "I'll be right back, honey."
J (watching me scribble madly): "Daddy, what are you writing?"
M: "I'm writing this whole conversation down, because it's so funny."
J: "What's a 'conversation'?"
M: "A conversation is when people take turns talking to each other."
J (looking at the scrap of paper I've covered with notes): "My, that's a yot of yetters you are writing!"
M: "Yes, I guess it is. I had to write a lot because you're being so verbal!"
J: "Daddy, what's 'burble' mean?"
M: "Verbal means good at talking."
J: "'Ver-ball sounds like Yertle!"
M (laughing harder): "Yes, I guess it does!"
J: "Daddy, yet's write down that conversation! Yertle! Verbal!"

If you live here and are less than three years old, this weekend is all about doing new stuff with your pink little body.

First and foremost, Genevieve closed out a busy day with what might have been her first forward crawling. I wasn't watching with full attention, but it appeared that, up on all fours, she shuffled her knees forward slightly and, without collapsing, got about six inches closer to a toy Julia had discarded. And then she stayed up, grabbed the toy, and jammed it into her drooly craw. We'll see if she follows up on this apparent progress on Sunday!

Second, Julia had a few unprecedented physical moments of her own yesterday at tumbling class. With no prompting, she got up on a low balance beam and made her way all the way along it, not even really caring that I wasn't helping. Then, even more shockingly, she ran away from me and just jumped right into the pit of foam cubes, not waiting for me to go in first (or for the kids already in the pit to, you know, get out of the way). I was impressed by these literal and figurative strides.

(Free bonus anecdote: on our way out of the garage for a walk, Julia paused to carefully lay several handkerchiefs (which I keep with my workout gear) over her foam-covered baseball bat. Why did she do this? Because everything that is, can be put to sleep, of course:  "I have to put Bat to sweep, Daddy! Okay, he's sweeping now. Ni'-ni', Bat! Sweep tight!"

Driving Julia home from tumbling class tonight around 6:30, we were listening to a Justin Roberts song in which he sings, "You can try to be all cool and subtle." Julia asked, from the back seat, "What's 'subtle' mean, Daddy?" I fumbled for a definition that came down to "telling someone something in a quiet way." A few minutes later, as I lifted her limp self down from the car, she tilted her head off to one side (her idiosyncratic way of indicating she's tired), and murmured, "I'm so hungry, but I'll just be quiet and subtle."

Incrementally, prosaically, but astoundingly, Genevieve is on the verge of being on the move. She has been using wiggles and rotation to get around for a week or two now, ever more effectively, though always backwards or sideways. She's very good at lowering herself from a sitting position by sticking one leg out to the side while keeping the other bent until needed to provide the little forward oomph for grabbing the toy that Julia will then decide is The Most Important Toy in the House. And this weekend, Genevieve tweaked that yoga-ish position slightly and wound up on all fours, with her hips up high - literally poised to crawl. We predict she'll be crawling by her nine-month birthday on the fifteenth.

Having mastered rolling and wiggling on the floor, she's quite naturally extended these skills to the crib. She now spends a few minutes at nap- and bedtime getting settled, and usually winds up on her stomach. This is all the more cute for the fact that Julia took a leaf from one of her favorite books and gave Gigi a teddy bear to sleep with. Granted, it was a teddy bear that some family friends had given to Genevieve, but still, it's the thought that counts. And Gigi loves PJ Bear, making very sure to snuggle up to it whenever she's sleeping. All of these milestones make it that much more fitting that on Saturday, Genevieve began intermittently clapping along with us, especially when Julia leads the cheer. From the "what the heck?" look on her chubby little face, it's clear that her palms are meeting mostly by accident.

Julia reached a milestone of her own this weekend, when I took the guardrails off her bed. She hasn't fallen out yet!