I love listening to Julia plink out songs on the guitar. I hope she never quits.
Category: girls
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
A Night with the Girls
Monday night was one of those almost perfect evenings with the kids that makes family life worth living. I came home at dinnertime and had a nice time eating and chatting with the girls while Shannon was on a run. They were full of funny stories and interesting questions. After we finished our meals, I cleaned up, Julia shifted to doing her homework, all of which she was excited or at least interested in doing (some relatively challenging math, studying for a science quiz), and Genevieve goofed around. When I asked them to take a break to clean up their toys outside, they did so without any protests and finished in about two minutes. Back inside, Julia practiced her guitar – always a lovely thing to hear – while Vivi and I played a complicated game she’s building out of other toys. Then we watched a silly but hilarious sitcom on Amazon before they took care of their bedtime routines, while I read a magazine. In bed by 8, they read until lights out. Not every evening goes this smoothly or well, but I’ll take them when I can get them.
River Bend Riding
On Friday, I helped chaperone a field trip by Julia’s sixth-grade cohort to the amazing [River Bend Nature Center](http://www.rbnc.org/) in Faribault, a half-hour south of Northfield.
Across the girls’ years of preschool and elementary school, this was maybe the tenth field trip I’ve taken to RBNC, and it was fun – orienteering, hiking, “fun challenges” like firestarting, archery, and slack lining, and generally being outside on a beautiful fall day.
We even got to see some goats that the land managers are using to control buckthorn!
Walking around all day, I decided I wanted to come back asap to ride on the trails, all of which are open to bikes and free to all users. Lo and behold, Julia was into it too, so we headed down this afternoon with our bikes.
Saturday’s weather was somehow even better than Friday’s, heightening our enjoyment – 70°F, breezy, sunny. From the parking lot, we headed to the remote trails on the south side of the Center, which we reached after going through a tunnel *and* over a bridge across the Straight River.
Just on the south side of the river, we hit a long hill that Julia needed to work hard to climb. She made it up without stopping, though, and after a short break we tooled around on the flatter, easier trails that ran to the far edge of the Center’s boundary. The narrow trails and changing foliage were beautiful.
Descending back to the river, I was happy to see Julia rip a couple steep downhills with no worry and considerable ease: she’d push her weight back, level her pedals, and then just drop in. Amazing.
Back on the northern side of the river, we headed to the Center’s big and gorgeous restored prairie, an expanse of browns and yellows draped over a gentle rise to the northern edge of the property. Riding now mostly on grass trails, we worked our way up to the Center’s high point, where (after a stiff little rocky climb) we enjoyed a gorgeous vista to the south:
A herd of buffalo would have improved this view, but I was more than happy to have spent 90 minutes riding with my favorite sixth grader. In true cyclist fashion, she was even game to take a couple laps around the parking lot area to bump up our mileage to exactly 8 miles. Not a bad afternoon’s work. I’m eager to go back again soon.
Fall Wednesday
Today was a perfectly ordinary day full of perfect ordinariness.
It was a Wednesday with nice fall weather – sunny, warm, and mild. The workday included three different meetings: one in the morning on a community project, one at dinnertime on an academic project, and one in the evening for our townhouse association. Being out late at those meetings, I didn’t get to see the girls till nearly bedtime.
I did plenty of miscellaneous work in between the meetings, some of which I did at the office, some of which I did at home or the coffee shop. Some of the work entailed finally finishing lingering projects, some nudged along current projects, some started new endeavors, and some was just answering emails. I ate a sandwich for each meal (though not the same sandwich). During my dinner at the downtown sandwich shop, a kid in the next booth started to melt down because he had onions in his sandwich. He stopped when his mom pointed out that the “onions” were actually peppers, and then had an actual meltdown when he didn’t get an “ice cream fudge” for dessert. I went to the gym and did poorly in a hard workout but bantered enjoyably with the other people in the session and our coach. I didn’t get to ride my bike much, though back and forth to work counts for something, and I was pleasantly cold in the way to work. I made some plans for winter racing. I heard the same REO Speedwagon song twice. I remembered to watch my favorite TV show at 9. And to have the last beer in the fridge.
Ballin’
At the end of the school year, Julia decided to take up a big challenge put on by the public school’s basketball coaches for the summer: to take 10,000 shots and amass 24 hours of ball handling.
She had to really work at it, but last week she finished the ball handling and this afternoon she took her ten-thousandth shot, making a basket in our weathered hoop:
I was impressed all summer long with her commitment to this challenge. She went out there and dribbled and shot on hot days and cool days, in mornings and in evenings, in the sun and in the rain, when she was rested and when she was tired, when she felt like doing it and when she didn’t. I’m proud of her for finishing in style.
Everybody Is Tae Kwon Fighting
The girls’ new purple belts mean that tae kwon do training now often involves sparring with other students at or just above their level.
I hadn’t really seen them do this until Thursday’s practice, and holy moly was it stressful to watch. Sure, they were all done up in protective gear, but still: seeing your tiny babies getting punched and kicked – and of course punching and kicking their foes? Riveting and scary. They loved it.
Mountain Biking with the Girls
All summer, the girls have been enrolled in a mountain biking class sponsored by our local MTB club and run at the new trails that the club built right in town. Though I can’t say every class went smoothly or that the girls loved every second they spent in the classes, they did learn a lot about riding and dramatically improved their skills, developed their endurance, and built their confidence.
The culmination of the class was an overnight trip to the massive MTB trail system built on abandoned mines at Cuyuna, in central Minnesota. Cuyuna is a fabled place for Minnesota mountain bikers and fatbikers, the place you go for the toughest trails and the best scenery. I had never been up there, so I hoped that the girls would both show the skills to successfully ride there and the enthusiasm to go "up north" on a little adventure.
By the middle of July, I could see that they had both: serious abilities on the trails and great eagerness for riding. In addition to the class, we rode several times on our own over the last few weeks, outings which they both loved. And then they crushed some tough challenges at the last regular class, which they described as "the most fun thing ever!" on the ride home.
The scene was thus set for a good trip to Cuyuna. Shannon was rightly concerned about both the practical arrangements and the girls’ safety, but I mostly allayed those fears – and some of the girls’ – and headed out on Thursday morning along with six other kids and five other adults, including the class leaders. The three-hour bus ride to Cuyuna was enjoyable, despite the need to give half our seats to a big rattling collection of bikes:
We arrived up north without any problems and almost immediately headed back into town to ride at a "pump track" – a compact system of dirt trails with undulating terrain and banked turns that are laid out so that good riders can get all the way around without pedaling – only "pumping" their arms and legs. None of us could pull off that trick, but everyone had a blast riding around and around and around on the track. I loved watching the girls loving the riding – and rapidly getting better at the unusual techniques needed to conquer the track. Julia crashed once, but was back riding within a few minutes. Whizzing past me, they shouted, "This is so much fun!"
After about an hour of pretty continuous riding, we adjourned for ice cream at Dairy Queen. Back at the campground, we set up our tents and took a short out-and-back ride on an easy stretch of the regular trails, getting a little of Cuyuna’s famous red dirt on our tires.
Everyone cooled off with a swim at the campground beach,
then we destroyed a delicious dinner prepared by one of the instructors and his wife – folks who have serious camp-cooking chops! Throughout, I tried to let the girls enjoy themselves and handle things largely on their own, which they readily did: being smart about riding and swimming, choosing good dinners, making their own sleeping arrangements… It was fun to see.
Friday morning, everyone woke up eager to hit the trails. I stayed behind while the other adults went for an early ride on some more challenging trails, but all the kids were great – getting dressed, eating good breakfasts, riding their bikes around excitedly. Finally, around 10, we headed out for a loop that would include three different "easy" trails. The wild card was the weather: as we started, the temps were already near 80° F with very high humidity. I gotta say that I was nervous as hell about whether Julia and Genevieve would be able to ride so much tough trail in such heat and humidity.
Fifteen minutes in, I knew they would. Without any problem, we roared en masse to the start of our loop, and got right to it: red-dirt trails that wound through young birch groves, tricky but manageable ascents and descents littered with loose rocks and stubbornly immobile roots, narrow passages overlooking beautiful lakes…
Wisely, our ride leader stopped often so kids could rest and drink and eat – little pauses that kept everyone energized and focused. Whenever he or the other instructor, riding last in our file, asked if everyone was having fun, the kids shouted, "Yes!"
We weren’t even deterred by a few bee stings when we inadvertently posed for a group photo on top of a beehive.
Julia got a bad zap on a finger, but soldiered on! I rode as much as I could right behind the girls so that I could watch them buzz along the trails, blonde ponytails poking out from under their helmets. Near the end of the ride, I finally stopped wondering if they could climb that nasty slope, ride that tricky descent, or rail that loose corner. The answer was always "yes," so I just settled in and enjoyed the sight of them loving the sport I love too.
The ride ended too soon for me (and I suspect for the other adults), but at just the right time for the kids – 90 minutes and about seven challenging miles of riding. The girls were just tired enough to sit for a nice photo of us – with a loon on the lake in the background!
An easy paved ride back to camp brought us down from the high of the ride to our last few activities: a quick lunch, a bit more swimming, and then of course packing up. The bus ride home was sweaty, but pleasingly quiet and relaxed.
Though we haven’t been back on our bikes since returning, the girls are excited to go to some of the more local MTB trails before school starts, and I am too. I am elated to have them riding the trails with me!
Vivi Is Nine!
Today Vivi turns nine years old! She’s an amazing kid: smart, funny, athletic, tireless, creative, and all around awesome. What a marvelous girl she is! Happy birthday, Genevieve Rose!
Vivi’s Multi-Utensil
Vivi asks, “What if you’re spelunking in a cave and you need to know the time, to take notes, to see in the dark, and bring home some samples of cave rock?”
Her answer is the Multi-Utensil, which includes a watch, a pen, a flashlight, and a little pocket.
Purple Belters
After successfully completing a very challenging tae kwon do test last Thursday, the girls tonight received their purple belts tonight at a lovely, relaxed event organized by their instructor, Dan Elo.
Dan said some nice things about each kid, and singled out the girls and their BFFs as being especially hard working. I hope they were as proud of themselves as I was. They’ve shown real discipline and dedication in coming so far so fast. Their belts and smiles are well earned.
Independence from Bedtime Day
July Fourth has been one of those holidays that’s been hard for the Tassava family to truly embrace. Ours isn’t a diet that easily incorporates grilled meat, for instance, and the girls’ former troubles with traveling, staying up late, or staying up late while traveling meant that we only finally "went somewhere for the Fourth" last year, when we both journeyed to the U.P. to spend the holiday with my mom and to see fireworks – which, in da Yoop, happen very late.
This year, my mom came down to see us, which made the holiday a lot simpler, and the girls were able both to stay up late enough to enjoy sparklers and fireworks and to sleep in a little bit the next day. So surprised were we by the latter development that I didn’t even plan to take them to the fireworks in Northfield. But after we burned off a million sparklers,
I got a text from a friend saying that the fireworks were imminent. I piled the girls into the car, zipped over to the spot where they were watching, and soaked in the experience. The girls loved it. What’s not to love?
And the next day, they even kinda slept in!
Summer’s Evening
What a day, man. The big event was that the Supreme Court handed down its ruling that legalized gay marriage thought the U.S. Somehow this made family seem even more important to me, so I was happy to get home in time for a great dinner – made by the girls! – and a long evening of warmth and sun.
The girls and I did a little bit of everything. In the full light, we played basketball and catch out front,
then went for a bike ride to watch the swallows catch mosquitoes over the ponds and admire a colossal cumulonimbus cloud far to the southeast.
As the sun set, we went to the backyard to watch for and try to catch fireflies. We also saw a couple bats, which was great.
Then after dark we set up Vivi’s telescope to look at the moon (which our neighbor Meg told us is called tsuki in Japanese), and Julia got put her guitar to play a few notes.
Summer is only four days old! I’m spent. Time to finish this beer and go to bed.