beast and bug

definitions: lawn / ecko

2012-02-15T04:16:00.000-08:00

It's the return of Double Definition Tuesday*

(day-late, dollar short edition)

----

lawn - verb, to shorted the length of the grass

(see also, "mow lawn" - a cutting implement to lawn a yard)

usage:
(outside, soaking in the sunshine of a rare, blue-sky winter day)

me: (coming out of the studio where I've been painting): Hey, girls?

K (from somewhere out of sight): Yeah?

L (also out of sight): Yeah?

me: What are you doing?

K: We're helping...

L: Yeah helping...

K: ... mama...

L: ... yeah mama...

K: ... planting...

L: ... planting...

K: .... something...

L: ... yeah, somethings....

me: Ok. M, you guys doing ok?

M (out of sight): Yeah, we're doing fine.

L (coming around side of house): Dada?

me: Yeah?

L (stopping in front of me, intrigued by the paint roller): Well, we tried but it isn't working.

me: Tried what? What isn't working?

L: To lawn. It's not working.

me (???): No?

L: Nope. (pointing to roller) What's that Dada?

me: It's my paint roller. Is there anything I can help with?

L: What?

me: With the... what did you try to do?

L: What?

me: You said it wasn't working, that you tried and it wasn't working.

L (obviously dealing with a dense mind): The mow lawn. We tried to lawn and it wouldn't work.

me: What's wrong with it?

L : Ask mama. (Yelling) Mama?!? It's not working!!!

M (from a distant part of the yard): What?

me (muttering): Exactly!

L: What? What Dada?

me&M (meeting in the yard): Wha..?

L (hands on hips, now forced to deal with 2 dense minds): I told Dada that we tried and it wasn't working.

me (looking at M with a raised eyebrow): Yeah!

L: And that's all I said!

M: Hmm...

me: The lawn.

M: Hmmm...

L (pointing at the push mower): That!

me: Ah. So you tried...

L: I said, we tried to lawn and it's broken. The mow lawn.

M: Ah...

me: ...ah, the mow lawn....

L (skipping away): Yup, it's not working and we going to do it....

me (looking at M): The 'mow lawn.'

M: Right.

me: You tried to 'lawn.'

M: Yeah, what don't you understand?

Ecko - noun, a small noisy lizard frequently seen in Hawaiian homes.

usage:
K: A spider!
me: I'll catch it. Don't worry.
M: Like you caught that cane spider on Maui?

(both of us laughing)

me: Well, those are different!
K: It's crawling!

L: Hey, you 'member that ecko?

me (glancing at M): Echo?

L: Yeah, on... on... where we were staying....

me: On Maui?

L: Yeah, where we were staying on Maui!

me (another glance at M): Really? An echo?

L (adamant): Yes! It was...

M (looking at me): Was what L?

L: Up on the wall! It was doing (makes clucking noises with her mouth).

K: That lizard?

L (finally someone who understands!): Yeah!

M: Oh, the gecko?

L: It runned down the wall and ate bugs!

me: Yeah, they're good at that. They're good. They eat bad things like mosquitos. We like them.

L: And they eat... spiders?

me: Well... I don't know...

K: Not that cane spider!

M (laughing): No, not that cane spider!

me: The walls were bare in that place. (glancing at L) And we did have some high volume commentary. I think there was an echo.

L: Yeah, and it runned after the spiders!

K: It's still crawling!!

... don't change a hair for me...

2012-02-14T06:19:00.000-08:00

... a few pictures of me with 2 of my 3 favorite valentines...

1/8/12

6/19/11

11/13/09

12/19/07

... oh, give me a home...

2012-02-01T05:22:00.000-08:00

Last night was a special night for K and me. We finished a chapter book together.

Seriously!

A bit of background: I've written before about just how important reading is to me, and has been since I was a little kid. Some of my first memories are of sitting in our Puunene living room, being read to. Mom in the middle on the couch, with Kim on one side and me on the other (Karol was, I believe, a bit too young at this point). Mom (and Dad) read to us often. I loved being read to, and was impatient to learn to read myself. We didn't have TV at that point, and I can remember both my parents sitting in armchairs in the evening, reading.

(When I consider the logistics of this - the children were still awake and yet they were reading? - it seems improbable. They probably weren't reading much, if my own experience is any indication!)

Anyway, books are good, books are important, books are your friends! (Hi librarian Mom!)

So we've always read to the girls, from early early on. Some of my favorite early memories of time spent with the girls is reading to them as they were swaddled and nestled against me, less than a year old....

And now K is reading herself. And it's an amazing and exciting thing to see.

She's also getting more interested in longer stories, and so we borrowed Little House in the Big Woods from a friend, and started it last week. And she's been loving it. LOVING it! It's taken precedence over Belle Stories, which is saying something. We've done a chapter here, a part of a chapter there.

L is less interested, but we manage to arrange things so that we do L-level books (Where the Wild Things Are, Night Pirates....) and then she either snuggles against me and falls asleep, or M takes her to her bed and lies next to her until she goes to sleep, while K and I read a chapter.

This has been working well, as we've begun letting K stay up a bit later than her sister. Otherwise, K wakes up early, and wakes up L, and everyone has not quite as wonderful a day as they might otherwise have.

So, we are 3 chapters from the end, and K is very excited about the coming chapter because we've looked ahead and seen that a boy gets stung by yellow jackets and is all swollen and gets packed in mud and wrapped in an old sheet. And we don't know what the details are, beyond this, but it's fascinating and compelling and she wants to know what happened!

I've been using Little House as a motivator. If we get done with bath in time.... if you're in jammies and with teeth brushed...., and it's worked well. K is snuggled in against me well before her sister is even up from her bath. And we read a bit, then switch to L's books, then back to Little House after M takes L to bed. And it seems like it's forever before we can start reading again, but then we read some more!

And we finish the chapter, and I look at the clock and it isn't yet quite 7.30p so I tell K we can do one more if she goes to bed right after that and she nods excitedly and snuggles in closer, and I remember what it's like to be captivated by a story and want to keep reading but at the same time not want it to end, and I feel like this is one of those moments when something special is getting transmitted on from one generation to the next. Truly.

We read the chapter, skipping a section on harvesting wheat. (One thing I've learned, reading this with K, is that there's no reason to make her listen to a long passage on how Pa takes care of his gun, or how Ma makes cheese - so we have an agreement that if something is boring, she lets me know, and I skip ahead.) We read about how Ma set a huge meal out for the threshers. (K has several times over the course of the book said "That sounds really good" when there's a description of a meal - pumpkin pie, dried berry pie, wild honey, johnny cake, venison....)

And then there's just one chapter left. And how can I possibly make her go to bed with just one chapter left?!? Simple - I can't. So I don't.

I lean over close to her and whisper, "I do this sometimes. I stay up too late finishing a book. But then the next day I'm tired and I have to remember that I'm tired because I wanted to read. So if you're ok being tired tomorrow, and will behave, we can read this last chapter."

And K nods quickly and adds "Yeah, yeah! And ask Mitzi for the next book!"

So we're co-conspirators, sharing this decision, sharing the import and repercussions of it. Understanding that we're making a choice together. And loving every moment.

We read it. And it's a chapter about how winter is coming, the leaves are changing and the weather getting colder and Pa goes out to shoot a deer to get some fresh meat but comes home without any, and that never happens, but the next evening he takes his girls on his lap and tells them how he'd seen first a huge buck, then a extra-huge bear, and then a doe and a yearling fawn, and how each time he hadn't wanted to shoot them. And the girls say "that's ok, we'll eat bread and butter" and "I'm glad you didn't shoot them." And then Laura and her sister fall asleep with Pa playing his fiddle and Ma knitting a sock next to the fire. And Pa is playing Auld Lang Syne and Laura wants to know what that means and when he tells her it's "the long ago old time" she thinks how "now is now" and that that's good. She's cozy and happy and in the moment.

And I kiss K and take her to bed and tuck her in and kiss her one more time and go downstairs knowing I've just had a very special moment with my oldest daughter, glad now is now.

* a couple of things to note:

I've never read any of the Little House books, so that helps keep me engaged. I'm as surprised by turns of events as K is. Sometimes (it feels) more so than she.
K doesn't seem too terribly thrown by the descriptions of hunting/pig butchering/panther attacking/hide-tanning (spanking). In fact, I've been a bit surprised that she's accepted it as willingly as she has. I'm sure she's processing it, the notion that to eat meat, you have to kill an animal, but she's working it out rather than simply reacting (the exception so far: last night when reading a section on making cheese, when it described that it was necessary to kill a calf to get rennit from it's stomach (K: "What's a calf?" me (knowing she knows, but obviously the context has thrown her off): "A baby cow." K: "Oh, no, that's not right!") - so I skipped a good part of that bit.

... slip, sliding away...

2012-01-26T23:02:00.000-08:00

Last week Seattle was "pounded" by a snowstorm (and subsequent ice storm) that dropped upwards of 4-6 inches of white on the city. As you can imagine, if you're from around here, things quickly slid to a halt. (And if you're not from around here, and imagine that 4 inches of snow isn't really that much, you're right, but this is Seattle so everyone freaks out when it does anything other than rain (we even have "sunshine slowdowns" in traffic, when the sun manages to come out), so it was SNOWPOCALYPSE 2012!

What this meant, among other things, is that the girls were out of school for 3 of the 4 days that were scheduled (Monday was Martin Luther King's Birthday), and that in turn meant that parents all over the region were driven crazy by their snowbound children. Including parents in our neighborhood and more specifically, in our house.

I knew the storm was coming (they'd been forecasting it in some for for 10-12 hours months) and had my laptop at home, so I "worked" from home on Weds, the first of the girls' snowdays. This meant that I worked in the morning, while M took the girls out into the arctic conditions.

And then they returned, or M and L returned, and I was suddenly on-call to go be with K on the sledding hill.

When I got there, I found K looking like this:

K, watching neighbors sledding

As soon as I walked up and she saw me, she turned and buried her face in my legs, crying. It turns out that she was having a horrible time, feeling left out. No one was asking her to sled, no one was offering her a ride. And as we only have a snow disc, she was feeling out of the loop.

The thing to realize is this: K had never been sledding. We'd tried a couple days before, when the snow first started, in our yard, but it wasn't enough snow and wasn't enough of a hill to really work. And more importantly, it was with her parents, not with cool neighborhood kids. Who had a sled, not a lame-o snow disc.

I'd brought the snow disc down with me, and I asked if she wanted to ride in it. "With you?" I said yes. She shook her head. I stood with her and we watched a bit, then I asked again and this time she grudgingly agreed to go. And we did. And she almost had fun. A few more turns, and then a neighbor girl asked her if she wanted to ride with her, and K was suddenly in 7th heaven. She was being included, and she was having a blast.

So K sledded and I disced and eventually we headed in for lunch (everyone else was doing the same), and we ate and chilled out for a bit. And then I looked up and saw beautiful light and asked K if I could take a picture of her. And she agreed. And I got these:

Happier now, after a positive experience on the "slopes"

And then she took the camera and took this one of me:

Not bad for a 5 yo!

And then, after a bit more resting and reading, we all went back out, K&L&M and me. And this time everyone had a great time. There were neighborhood kids to sled with, neighborhood girls riding their own snow discs (which put our disc into a different light!). And K was getting comfortable with the whole idea of careening down a slick hill with little or no control, on her own:

L didn't have any problem doing that, but then she's sort of that kind of girl:

And M didn't have any problem with it either, but then, she and I had had martinis at lunch:

M, showing them how it's done!

M&L on an end-of-the-day run

Aftermath

Ultimately, it was a good day for the family. It started out rough, but everyone adjusted and got into the swing of the experience, and we all had fun and crawled into bed that night feeling happily exhausted, with snow still falling, and the promise of another snow day ahead!

... i held my breath...

2012-01-22T22:02:00.000-08:00

It's been a long week, because it started snowing last Saturday (during a race I was doing), and continued, off and on, through Thursday. Monday was a school holiday (Martin Luther King's Birthday), Tuesday they went to school, Weds/Thurs/Fri were snow days. Every day was a long one for the parent left home. (I worked from home on Monday and took the girls sledding - more on that in another post), I went to work Tuesday, worked from home Weds, went to work Thurs and Fri. M went mostly a bit stir-crazy.

M's been taking the girls to swim at her club for several months now, and telling me that they're doing really well. Some Sunday mornings K and L will come back excited to tell me that they swam to their mom, or jumped from the side of the pool to a noodle, or dove down to the last step to get a swim toy. M too has been keeping me posted on progress, but I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, until this weekend.

But we all went to the club on Sunday and I got to witness the swimming. And I was impressed.

The last time I saw the girls swim, they were clinging to us, insisting on holding on, maybe grabbing one stroke as they crossed a 2-foot gap between one of us and the wall. On Sunday I watched them both jumping off the side of the pool (no noodles), swimming 10 and more feet, diving down (or trying to, in the case of L, our resident cork). It was impressive. So much so that I took several videos, only one of which I'll inflict on you.

And so much so that a woman there with her own 2 children asked me how long the girls had been swimming and how they'd learned. I told her that M had been doing a lot of work with them, and that they'd also started watching a mermaid show (which I'm convinced encouraged them to start putting their heads under water in the bathtub). The show itself is dreck, but if it contributed to their comfort in the water, then I'm willing to put up with it. Even though it's no Saddle Club....

... 'cause baby, it's ....

2012-01-17T04:37:00.000-08:00

.... freakin' freezing outside! So what am I thinking?!?

Saturday it was blustery and cold and I did the first race of the PNW-ORCA Winter Series on Lake Union. The wind made the water lumpy and disorganized, which meant that Jeff and I had a challenge keeping our seats. And it meant we weren't able to do what we'd planned, which was to get a jump at the start and put some distance between us and a lot of the other canoes.

We've been training to push hard, and we'd intended to try and bust out at the start. Instead we sort of wallowed out, with me paddling on the left a goodly portion of the time, just to make sure we stayed upright.

And the wind was windy. And the cold was coldy. And then it snowed. And it snowed as we paddled. We caught most of the others by the time we were 1/2 way to the Ballard Bridge. And we did fine.

Here's a picture of the start, which was off of Gas Works Park.

bumpy start
(we're somewhere way in the back, putting ourselves in a hole)

The wind was blowing from the west-southwest. Which meant not only that the wind bumps were reflecting off the breakwall at the park, making for the choppy conditions shown in the picture, but that we had a headwind all the way down the ship canal to the Ballard Locks. The wind eased some on the way back (which meant that we didn't have it pushing us along going east). But it was fun.

Here's our track for the race:

We came in at 57:34, which is fine. We were the 16th canoe to finish (7th oc2, first sr. master oc2) and though we didn't manage our unofficial goal of averaging 7mph, given the conditions, I'm good with it.*

This was the first time Jeff and I have raced oc2 together, and the first time he's raced in a small boat, so all-in-all, it was a good day.

*in comparison, last year I did the race in milder conditions in an oc1 and finished in 1:05.1, 26th canoe in, 2nd sr. masters.

... snow day!!!

2012-01-16T19:05:00.000-08:00

disclaimer: these were all taken yesterday, Sunday.

I was at home today (Monday), but I was working. So I didn't have time to take more pictures of the girls playing in the snow. But we had snow. Starting on Saturday. Continuing yesterday. And today.

A snow bunny

The start of something

The middle of something

Something
(flying toward me, at the top center of the picture)

It turns out that K has a pretty good arm. And that the snowsuits M found for the girls work quite well in keeping them warm.

Today, when I took a break from working, we all walked down toward the Junction to get coffee, since if we were going to be snowed in, we needed coffee. Almost more than water or air. Except that we also need water to make coffee. So it's not a one-or-the-other kind of thing. It's coffee, water, and then air is a distant third. If available. Air we can actually do without. In a pinch.

And we made it partway there before we needed to catch a bus and we did and we went into Cupcake Royale to get a cupcake (and a bag of Stumptown coffee, out of which Cupcake Royale was almost sold... out... of), and then we caught another bus back toward home. It was a good break.

So we were successful. The girls got some exercise and fresh air. As did M and me. And did I mention that we got coffee? For espresso tomorrow morning. Because if you're snowed in, you need coffee. Coffee!!

... get yer motor runnin'...

2012-01-09T05:06:00.000-08:00

There's something inherently emotional about watching a child moving away from you at speeds you cannot yourself maintain. It's "so metaphorical!" to semi-quote the girls.

After all, what better way to represent the growth and ultimate freeflying of offspring than with a photo showing one of them riding her bike away from you with no hesitation, no thought of what she's leaving behind.

I watch L riding away from me down this boardwalk and think about how she's destined to leave one day, to ride away either by herself, or with some greasy-haired, no 'count biker dude boyfriend, or to college, and I realize my baby was growing up.

In other words, I took L and her bike to the park yesterday (Sunday) morning and she had a blast. Our street is a bit too bumpy, and a bit too sloped, to make it ideal for learning to ride a bike. Either you're going too fast (downhill) or too slow (uphill, needing constant pushing from a parent). So we figured if we could get the girls to some smooth, flat surface, they might have a better experience. That was the plan. Note that I said "the girlS."

But things didn't go as planned. (I know, I was shocked too!)

K's been in a bit of a state lately. Honestly, we all have been. We got bad colds over Christmas. And there's the inherent stresses of the holidays (good as well as not so good). And the girls were home for 2 weeks, which is a mixed blessing, as it means both they're home, and they're not getting the activity/interactions they're used to at school. So we've all been a bit less than jake. And K is in one of her 1/2 yearly stages where she intentionally pushes buttons, pushes L, pushes us. So yesterday morning she was misbehaving and got a timeout but refused to go upstairs, so I walked her up and told her she needed to behave or she would lose privileges. Like maybe going to the pool. Or to the park. And then she spit at me (really, just a bronx cheer, but still, with a smirky grin on her face, and very intentional). So I lost my temper and said "Ok, you've just lost the privilege of going to the park to ride your bike."

It was one of those moments where as soon as you speak, you wish you could take it back and say something slightly different - because this was a lose-lose-lose proposition. She won't get the exercise/fresh air. I won't get to spend time with her. And M has to stay home (rather than either come with us, or go do the week's shopping). But once I say it, there is no way to back up. So L and I head out while K dissolves in tears. With M having to clean up that mess.

And L had a blast.

Getting the hang of it

I'm sure K would have as well.

(It's amazing how fast you can make a kid go, when you give them a good stiff push on a steep slope!)

Moving... not as fast as it looks

Actually, L has a built-in tendency to toss herself off things willy-nilly. Like the pool deck. She's got a bit of a thrill seeker in her I suspect.

So our approach was to spend a bit of time peddling on the flat cement, then out on the boardwalk ("Dada?" "Yeah L?" "What if this all fell down?" "It's not going to fall down." "But what if it did? For real?" "Then I'd climb us out." "But Dada, we'd be falled down." "I could get us out!"), then I pushed her up the path to the viewpoint at the top of the view tower. And then we went back down, with me holding her back. And then back up again. And back down. And this time she got annoyed at my holding her back. By the time we reached the last (small) ramp, she wanted me to just let go so she could go fast. And I did. And she did. And her giggling echoed across the park.

I mean, she really got a kick out of it. So I had to push her back up and she rode back down. And we did it again. And I told her that we could do it "one more time" before we had to start back.

I wish M could have seen it. She'll see it soon enough, I guess (and she's been seeing them both swimming, since they get into the club on M's membership and I'm not a member). L just got such joy out of going fast.

Like a fledged bird, leaving the nest. It's all but done now, isn't it. Goodbye little 4yo!

And then reality.

She stops. She looks back, yells for me to hurry up because she needs my help:

She's stuck on a particularly lumpy board, and can't go anywhere. And I realize that there's a a chance she may never leave home, not to mention our bed.

And then we took video to show to M and K when we got home:

... how do you sleep...

2012-01-04T16:09:00.000-08:00

As much as I ~~complain~~ comment about the swings in behavior that occur with the girls, I have to acknowledge that there are what might seem to be similar swings in my own behavior... at times.

She looks so pleasant in daylight....

For example. I can go for a good long time wanting, insisting that the girls sleep in their own darn beds. Alone. Without intervention from us. And ultimately this seems like a good goal, given that M and I will likely not be available to crawl into beddy with them, say, once they're in college, or on their honeymoons.

But there are times when I weaken. Like last night, for example.

I woke up around 2-ish to L calling, "Mommy!"

By all rights, I could have turned over in some manner that woke M up so that she realized she was needed, but for some reason (possibly I've gotten closer to enough sleep in the last couple of nights, possibly I'm starting to feel nearly over my cold, possibly a combination of both....) I got up myself and went out and found L lying completely uncovered in her bed.

I knelt down and put my hand on her tummy while I pulled her covers up.

L (loud "whisper"): Dada?
me: Yeah?
L: I need someone to lie with me.
me: Yeah?
L: Would you lie with me?
both of us, in unison: Just one minute?
me: Ok. (patting the bed) I need to lie here, on the inside.
L (misunderstanding and shifting over to where I'm patting): Ok.
me (what the hell): Just one minute.
L (snuggling in now, hand poked down my left sleeve, head resting on my shoulder): Ok.

In just a few minutes she was breathing deeply. And there's something undeniably awesome about curling up with my daughter in the middle of the night, feeling her body warming up, feeling her relax and drift off.

I'll admit that a big part of my willingness to do this has to do with my sense that time is passing quickly, and before too much longer neither of the girls will want me to snuggle in bed with them, and while that's appropriate and even desirable, there are things about it I'll miss. Don't get me wrong. I have no desire to snuggle in bed with my getting-grown-up child, but while she's 4yo it's a joy to share that time with her. Sometimes.

We both drifted off, actually. I woke up some time later and slipped out and went back to my own bed, but it felt like it was good to have done this, and that it wouldn't ultimately have a negative impact.

I suppose we'll see. Her roommate (or husband) may hate me in about 20 or 30 years....

... just a little bit...

2012-01-03T20:43:00.000-08:00

... of your time...

It's as simple as this: take a moment, be there and listen to them and really hear them. Look eye-to-eye and share the time.

Tonight, I was tired, late home from work, wanting to eat and chill out, and M had the girls bathed and dressing in their jammies, ready for toothbrushing, books and bed. And K asked if I would tell a Belle story. And M asked if I wanted her to read to them tonight.

And miraculously, there are moments when, in spite of myself, I somehow manage to appreciate what I've got right here in my hands.

12/11/11

Some background: lately K has been a really pain in the... something. In our house we call it "being a pill," and she knows it.

She'll intentionally do something mean to her sister and then come tell us ("I just spit at L."), basically forcing us to respond in some way (a timeout for quiet thinking, loss of some privilege, a forced apology to L). And then she reacts based on what we've responded with. In other words, she's acting her age (5 1/2).

The challenge is, it's been a while since she's acted like this. L tends to be dramatic. K tends to be rational and to listen to us and hear what we're saying. So it trips me up when she goes through a stage like she's been going through. And it's so easy to react, to get angry, to get annoyed.

But yesterday as I helped K and L get ready for bed, and they're running around and acting like little girls, I sit on the floor in their room and enjoy it. They're in their underwear, jumping over my outstretched legs, being "horses" with me being the "owner" but also the jump. (K: How about you be the owner, but you're also the jump. L: Yeah, you're the owner and you're the jump! me (figuring it means I get to sit down): Uh... ok.)

And this can be a real pain, when they get like this. I want to get them into bed, and they're wound up and seemingly not anywhere near tired. But on this particular night I've had the day off, and even though I'm tired and feeling ill, it's only 5.30p so we have lots of time and I manage somehow to find it amusing watching 2 young girls in their underwear pawing at the rug and neighing at the top of their voices, running full-tilt to leap over my legs and crash into the far wall of their bedroom.

And here's the thing, and this is a lesson I'm going to be relearning every week or so until I die, because it just doesn't seem to stick: when I can stay calm, when I can keep from getting stressed out, EVERYTHING GOES BETTER. Like with Coke. Except it's with Calm. Everything goes better with Calm!

So because I'm not freaking out about getting their teeth brushed or getting them into jammies and into bed, they accept it when I steer them toward the bathroom. I'm grinning and laughing at their high-jinks and that gets them laughing too, and we get their teeth brushed and then we're all in bed, snuggled under the covers and I'm reading a book to them and then it's time for a Belle story, except instead of snuggling in and falling asleep while I tell it, L wants to get into her own bed, so we knock on the floor and M comes up and takes her to bed while I tell K her story. I can see K falling asleep too, but we finish the story (L has fallen asleep about 2 minutes after M took her off) and then I help K in the bathroom and then tuck her in and she doesn't even ask for a song or a story about when I was a little boy. I tell her I love her and kiss her and we're done. She's out and it's not even 7pm and I stand there looking at these two little girls who sometimes seem determined to frustrate and try me, and I'm realizing just how special these times are, and I'm grateful for everything I have.

And so, tonight, even though I'm late and I'm tired, when K asks if I can do a Belle story, I hesitate, hedge, then realize that yes, I'm going to tell her a Belle story. And when I say it's going to be a short one, she snuggles in close and nods, saying "Ok" in a soft voice, already looking forward to hearing what happens.

(for the record, in last night's story, K and Annie take their newly trained wild horses Snowflake and Makaoioi to see Casandra on her island, to introduce her to the horses and vice versa. And Casandra takes them to the pirate treasure and gives them each a pair of earrings which they wear home. In case you were wondering!)

... it's beginning to look a lot like...

2012-01-01T19:59:00.001-08:00

...2012! How the hell did that happen?

What I look like on New Year's morning...
... after not much of any partying at all.

Yikes. So what about that year-end recap of all the exciting things I did/saw/accomplished? What about my wrap-up of paddling events for 2011? What about a post at least mentioning L's recent 4th birthday? Crap!

Well, I've got most of the paddling wrap-up written, and have thought about the recap, and as for L's birthday, here's a picture I'm particularly fond of:

And another, taken earlier in the day, during the "fairy wings" phase of the celebration:

Which, if memory serves, was somewhere around 0-dark 30 in the morning.

And speaking of which, we're in a routine these days of waking up around 5.50a, when either K or L calls out "Mommy!" As any parent worth their salt knows, this specificity gives the other parent full rights to roll over in bed (sympathetically), and try to sleep through whatever issue is being brought to Mommy's attention (could be a dirty kleenex, an empty water cup, or a question about when we can all go down stairs and have a piece a candy).

Ultimately, though, we all end up downstairs trying to come up with something to eat for breakfast (easier for a couple of us than for a couple of other, younger ones of us).

Oh yeah, and one other thing, just to prove that genetics isn't a one-to-one match. Here's a picture I took this morning of someone who doesn't much like to have his picture taken. Hard to imagine that the little girl in the preceding photos is related! And damn, I look lousy on not enough sleep! But I was in bed by 9p and asleep by 9.30p last night. And up before 6a. And that's what I was talking about.

Self-portrait, without sleep.

Beyond that, I've got not much of anything for you except a wish for a happy 2012, and thanks to everyone for being a part of my 2011.

... what a gas...

2011-12-22T05:12:00.000-08:00

... you gotta come and see... at the zoo!

or, scrambling to close out the year with some backed up half-written posts, I found this one nearly complete so you're stuck with it. Besides, M is taking the girls to the zoo today, so it's apropos. Sort of...

~~Last Sunday~~ Some time back in September (I think), we did a father-daughters trip to the zoo in order to get the girls out of the house, and all of us out of M's hair for a bit. It was cloudy and windy and seemed to be threatening rain, but this is Seattle and if you let those kinds of things change your behavior, you're going to be stuck inside for 9 or 10 months of the year.

We've got a zoo membership, which means we can come and go as we please. It also means there's much less pressure to "see all the aminals" because we can always come back, and it doesn't feel like we've spent money so we need to squeeze full value out. So, I do my best to let the girls call the shots.

Me, I would have liked to see the brown bears. It seemed like the sort of weather they might like, and I have seen them swimming in the "stream" right at the front of their exhibit. But, L wanted to ride the carousel and K wanted to see the penguins. And they both wanted to show me the
dinosaurs that were there the last time they visited.

Sadly, the dinosaur exhibit was over:

L: Daddy, they aren't real now. They used to move and make noise, but they're not doing that now.
me: Nope, the exhibit is closed now. But they weren't real before. They're models.
L: Yeah, they're dead.
me: Well, no, not exactly. Dead means they were alive, but these were never alive.
K: But dinosaurs were alive. They just aren't now.
me: That's right, they were. But these aren't real dinosaurs, they're models.
L: Yeah, they're pretend.
me: uh....

The weather and the early start on a Sunday meant that it was wonderfully quiet. We started at the penguins, which were hanging out next to the water. All except for one that was swimming (very quickly) and popping up out of the water and diving back down, zipping along. The girls thought it was grand.

Next, an unscheduled stop at the photo booth so L could go inside and sit and pretend to be... doing something:

L, in a photo booth, with impractically white shoes

(doing... something)

Then, a swing by the jaguar, into the rain forest exhibit where we saw a yellow anaconda, a poisonous snake, some birds and monkeys, and got too hot.

Back outside, L wanted to go one direction while K wanted to go see the jaguar licking its privates. First two-on-one issue of the trip. I left L, ran after K, observed the licking with her, then pulled her back toward L who was threatening to take off on her own.

Skip the gorillas, the lions, head for the....

me: Now what?
K: The penguins!
me: We just saw the penguins.
K: No, uh, the... the...
me (wild guess): The flamingos?
K: Yeah! The flamingos.

... flamingos where we briefly looked, then back toward the carousel. Still quiet, still calm, still manageable.

The carousel started as we got there, and L panicked briefly because we were missing it. I assured her that it would be stopping soon so we could get on. I bought tokens and gave them to the girls who each handed the man their two. And we chose our steeds.

K picked one whose name was Pal-o-mine, and L picked one called .... I'm not sure what its name was. But neither picked theirs by name, so it's not important.

K, well seated on Pal-o-mine

L, in heaven on who-knows-o-mine

I'd made clear to the girls that we'd do one ride and then go see the elephants and do another ride before we left. But sure enough, once it was over, L wanted to go again. We didn't. I reminded her of her agreement and we left, reluctantly, but we left.

On toward the elephants, but we passed the raptor center where a keeper had a big horned owl on her arm. We paused to listen to her say that you can identify them by their yellow eyes (the only other large owl we have around here is the barn owl, and they have black eyes).

Now to the elephants, which were outside enjoying the weather. And, glorious day!, pooping.

Freshly laid poop
(ELEPHANT poop!)

If you had to choose something to delight little children, a good choice would be animals pooping. And this is not just for little boys either. I've come to realize that little girls are as interested in bodies and bodily functions as little boys. I can imagine that the focus will change as we approach the teens, but right now there was general consensus that a pooping elephant was pretty darn hilarious.

And think about it - after watching and laughing, what would you do?

You'd check to see if the little girl watching nearby shared the same sense of humor as you and your sister. And she does! Of course!!

Does she...?
(Yeth!)

Next, dragging a bit, it's back toward the... carousel! After some snacks, and a turn with daddy's camera:

Photo by L
(photogenicity by K)

Photo by K
(attitude by L)

We went by way of the benches next to the bird area, where we happened on a flight show.

So we paused and found seats and watched as first a peregrine falcon flew around overhead, then a turkey vulture hopped out and flew back and forth, then 2 different owls. And all through this the keeper was telling us bits of information, like why the turkey vulture doesn't have any feathers on its head, and the difference between how the falcon and the turkey vulture fly (the falcon flaps a lot, the turkey vulture soars and glides). K seemed quite interested, but L was fading, so we compromised and watched the second owl fly and then headed slowly toward the carousel.

And when I say "we" and "slowly" I mean L and myself. K took off, running ahead out of sight.

I wasn't crazy about this, but couldn't do much about it, and figured she was relatively safe at the zoo on a Sunday morning. As we turned a corner in the path, a young woman with a Zoo shirt on asked if I was looking for a "little girl in red." I said I was and she said that she'd "gone that way." I told her we were headed for the carousel and that that little girl knew the way. The woman didn't seem to think much of my parenting approach, but all I could do was think "just you wait!"

By the time L and I reached the carousel building, K was inside.

Another ride apiece, and then we headed for the gate, the van, and some snacks. And home.

Something of note that happened later, when we were telling M about the things we saw, I realized that K was really paying attention during the flight demo. I mentioned that we'd learned things like why turkey vultures don't have features, and K said "Yeah, to keep their heads clean!" and when M asked why that mattered, K told her "Because they stick their heads into dead animals." Which is exactly right. She also remembered that the TV soared and glided while the falcon flapped a lot. It was very cool.

L remembered the elephant poop.

(Not that K forgot that...)

... sleep keeps me awake ...

2011-12-21T04:59:00.000-08:00

or, scenes from a bedroom:

M (after L has spent 10 minutes shifting and turning between us in bed): L, you need to close your eyes and go to sleep. Or you have to move back to your bed.
L: I'm sleeping with my eyes open.
me: (silence)

Not from a bedroom
(and not even from this month - so sue me)

... thanks, thanks a lot....

2011-11-24T22:10:00.000-08:00

I've got a lot to be thankful for, not the least of which are a warm, dry place to sleep tonight and plenty of food to eat. I'm safe and fed, which is better than a lot of people out there in rain and worse.

Here are just a few of the things I'm thankful for:

- my daughters:

thing one...

and thing two

- my wife:

- my family (here in washington, in hawaii, and in alabama), old friends (around the world), all the paddling folks I've met and the new friends I've made, and the opportunities I have to paddle.

I wish the best to all of you out there, both folks I know and folks I don't. We're all in this together, this "life" thing.

... i stood stone-like at midnight...

2011-11-23T17:50:00.000-08:00

(from an overheard conversation)

Not everything is a walk in the park!
Sunday, 11/20/11

scene: I've read the evening's books and have fallen near-asleep while telling a Belle story. K is lying next to me, and M is carrying L to bed.

L (suddenly teary): I don't want to grow up!
M: You don't want to grow up?
L (more teary): No!!
M (tucking her in): Why not? Why don't you want to grow up?
L: Because I don't want to have a baby!
me (half-asleep on our bed): ?!??
M: ?!?? What? Why not?
L (still teary): I don't want to have a baby!
M: You don't have to have a baby.
L: Cause I don't want to!!
M: Ok, that's fine. You don't have to have a baby.
L: Why?
M: Because you don't have to. You can decide. You have to try to have a baby.
L (apparently intrigued now): You have to try to have a baby?
M (relaxing, I imagine): Yeah. It's a choice. You have to try.
L: How do you try to have a baby?
me (slightly less asleep now): (snicker)
M: Uh...
L: Can you show me?
me (yikes! eyes tightly shut): (snort)
M: No, I can't show you.
L: Please, show me how to try and have a baby!
M: I can't show you how to try and have a baby, L.
L: Why not?
M: Because.
L: Well, how do you try to have a baby?
M: How?
L: Yeah.
M: Uh... parts from a man and parts from a woman... get together and start to grow a baby in the woman's tummy.
L: Parts from a man?
M: Uh huh.
L: And parts from a woman?
M: Uh huh.
L: But...
M: You don't have to have a baby.
K (lying beside me): That L!
me (awake): Time for you to get into bed too!

... aloha o'e...

2011-11-18T18:09:00.000-08:00

or, watching as mommy's ferry disappears across elliott bay.

Last weekend we went to Jack Block park in West Seattle to spend some time before we could reasonably justify going to eat fish and chips. And while there, we were able to watch the ferry M was on crossing the bay.

It's a sad, poignant image, only slightly undercut by the fact that she was leaving us for something like 4 hours and during that time was never more than 6-8 miles distant. But still....

And then we climbed steps.

What passes for style when I'm in charge!

Windsprints! Ready... Go!!

And there were some fall colors.

That was last weekend. This weekend M is taking off for Portland for another trip without us. And this time she'll be gone overnight. Who knows what might happen!

... have you heard, the word is...

2011-11-16T04:42:00.000-08:00

... book!

This weekend we achieved a milestone: K read to L.
I don't think you understand, so let me repeat myself:

K read to her little sister!!!

And when I type "read" I mean READ. Like as in sounding out the words (for the most part) and getting them right (for the most part). Dang it, I'm starting to think this Montessori thing might be worth doing on a global scale!

In order to adequately capture just how important this feels to me, let me back up and say that one of my earliest and most precious (in the valuable sense, not in the excessively refined sense) memories is that of sitting on the couch in our house in Puunene, "reading" with my parents.

Both parents were book people. We didn't even have a T.V. for several years after I was born. I remember watching John F. Kennedy's funeral on a borrowed T.V., and then later, we had a television that possibly my grandparents bought us, which would shock you if you touched it (which, now that I think about it, is great motivation for just leaving the thing going all the time!). And kids, when I say "T.V." I'm talking about something about 3 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet that weighed about 300 pounds and showed grainy black and white moving images on a 9 inch by 9 inch screen. It was AMAZING! If you're having trouble getting the idea, and you've ever had to pretend to be impressed by an ultrasound of a 2 month old embryo, it was a lot like that. If someone told you what you were looking at, you could kind of imagine it, right there on the screen in your own living room! "See that? That's Captain Kangaroo's spleen. And there's his kidney...."

But I digress. My parents were both readers. I can remember the exciting evenings we had in that plantation house, sitting around reading. Seriously. After dinner my dad sat and read. Crazy, huh? And because both mom and dad were such readers, we kids wanted to read to. Oh how we wanted to read. And be read to. And pretend to be reading ourselves. And (eventually) actually read. "I am Cubby Bear. I can climb trees...."

Trust me, it may sound like a version of hell to you, but it was glorious and wonderful to me. Books opened up magical worlds and I still love to dive into them, and I still have some psychological issues admitting that maybe I don't actually "need" all the books I feel compelled to buy.

So, K has been learning her letters and her sounds, and has been pseudo-reading for a while now. But just recently M mentioned that she really was reading. I didn't necessarily entirely buy it, but then I got to sit with her and help her through Go Dog Go. And then she read it to her sister.

... two big dogs coming out...

Wow!

Seriously! Wow!!

I understandably feel that my work as a parent is nearly done. And we managed quite admirably, if I do say so myself! And we'll just skip past the teenage years, if that's alright with all of you....

... and i thank you...

2011-11-11T06:09:00.000-08:00

11/11/11 - Veterans Day

edit: Added a note at the bottom, about the girls' other grandfather, also a veteran.

Thank you, Dad, Grandpa Biddle, and all the other veterans, both in and out of my family, who believed in and fought for our country and the things that make it so great.

My father, late 1970s or early 1980s

Dad was 16 and attending Punahou in 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He told stories about seeing the puffs of dark anti-aircraft smoke over Honolulu, and about being torn regarding whether or not he should go to a previously scheduled appointment. This appointment was with some man and was related to Dad's Eagle Scout work. Everyone was supposed to stay off the streets and stay off the phones. Dad didn't want to leave this guy hanging, so finally called him. When he reached him, he was told "in nor uncertain terms that I should 'GET OFF THE PHONE!'."

The U.S. Army took over the Punahou campus, and Dad and his classmates attended school in temporary classrooms at.... Maryknoll? I'm not sure. And he went off to the Merchant Marine Academy after graduating, finishing up there in mid-1945 and expecting to be shipped out to the Pacific. I think he'd already been given his orders to report to San Francisco when the war ended.

He served in the Naval Reserve all the time I was a boy, and during that time I was vocally anti-military. This was the last 1960s and through the 1970s. Hippies and Woodstock and Kent State. Vietnam and Richard Nixon, the Paris Peace Talks, Chicago 1968.... I was now attending Punahou, and things were quite different, everyone was challenging the status quo. It was not the same place Dad had attended. (One year we had a chaplain who put Wonder Bread and Coke on the altar to represent in a modern way the staples of communion. I believe this guy was later charged with participating in the burning of the ROTC buildings on UH campus....)

I was young and though I may still believe some of what I argued then, I wouldn't argue it in the same way as I did. I'd like to think I'd be more understanding of Dad's perspective and his sacrifices.

It's only in the last 20 years or so that I've begun to get some understanding of what he must have felt, both as a citizen who witnessed Pearl Harbor, and as a father whose son resisted some of the things he believed in and stood up for.

Grandpa, on his Army horse, Oahu

Grandpa, Civilian Defense

My mom's father was in the Army, the Cavalry in fact. He was part of Pershing's push into Mexico, chasing Pancho Villa. He told wonderful stories about those experiences, nearly all of them tales of his own ineptitude. He was a good story teller. After that, he ended up in Hawaii in the Army, fell in love, and stayed.

Like my dad, Grandpa witnessed Pearl Harbor. He was a civilian by that point and living with my Grandmother and mom in Kaimuki. He immediately tried to reenlist, but they wouldn't take him. He was working for the phone company, and I believe it was a combination of his age and his work (vital to the war effort) that kept him out of the Army a second time. But he joined the Civilian Defense Corps and served at home.

I have enormous gratitude for my father and grandfather and wish they were here so I could tell them in person, as an adult. I can only hope they understood that a boy may not understand all that he is given by those who precede him. My personal goal is to aim for that kind of understanding with my own daughters as they begin to question what their old dad thinks and to challenge what he's done and is doing.

Note: I wanted to add that my father-in-law, the girls' other grandfather, also served in the Navy and was implicitly included in my gratitude. I don't have a photo of him to include here, and as this has generally been written from my limited point of view, I hadn't called him out. But I think I ought to, and am doing so now, because he too did his part and deserves our gratitude and understanding.

... time waits for no one...

2011-11-07T16:35:00.000-08:00

... but this doesn't really seem to matter much to L.

L, on the beach w/ her uncle
(note the discrepancy between outfits)

The girl who, all summer long, insisted on long pants and long-sleeved shirts, not to mention often knitted hats, this icy weekend decided on shorts and a t-shirt when we went down to the beach. Photographic evidence to follow, but first, a recap of our weekend.

This was a special weekend for several reasons, not the least of which is I went out of my way to make my older sister feel good. I did this by making sure the house was a mess, with toys scattered hither and yon (me: Hey M, where's K's baby doll? M: It's in the corner. me: What corner? M: Yon corner!) and clutter piled everywhere.

I suppose a bit more background is necessary.

M had an event on Saturday night, which meant she was out of the house starting around 9.30a, and didn't return until after midnight. Which meant that I was on my own for... nearly (12 plus 3 minus 30.... hmm....) a bunch of time. Probably close to as long as she was on parenting on her own when I recently went back to Maui for 9 days. I'll leave anyone who is mathematically inclined to do the appropriate factoring, etc. Anyway, I was on my own, and frustrations were running high. The girls have gotten into a bad habit of wanting to watch a video and to eat candy. And nothing else. The house was a mess, the yard too. And Kim and Jim came up from Olympia to help distract us.

Which worked fantastically. The girls (and I) enjoyed their visit. And Kim got to say "Now I don't feel so badly. I used to think I was incompetent when I was juggling 2 young children, but...." And that empty space after her "but" implied that I was AT LEAST as incompetent as she had felt, which was good. Hmm....

Anyway, part of what we did on Saturday was to go down to the beach at Alki. It was sunny and windless and thus, beautiful. It was also freakin' cold. (There was ice covering the surface of the water table, if that helps put things in perspective.) Preparing to go down there, I needed to get the girls out of pajamas and into clothes. K took care of this herself. L took the opportunity to have a couple of breakdowns. Which we worked through, and she chose shorts and a t-shirt. Which I shrugged about and said "ok."

We went downstairs and Kim and Jim both started to say "Wow, aren't you going to be col..?" and I made the universal "we've discussed it and come to a common agreement!" gesture of slashing my hand across my throat and they got my drift and we were on to the beach.

Here's proof:

Drawing in the sand
(two distinctly different sized utensils)

A horse, running in her pasture

One definition of a "two horse race"

"Hurry! Hurry!!"

Later, the girls and I needed to do things like eat dinner, which was made possible by the shopping trip Kim and Jim did for me shortly after they arrived and discovered that I could offer them raw sugar and an onion for lunch. Which didn't strike them as entirely what they were craving (for some odd reason - she's my older sister, if that helps explain her behavior!). So they went out and bought bagels, cream cheese, milk, bananas, bread.... I thought about asking them to also take the car and get the oil changed, but that seemed like it might be pushing it.

So, after they left, we did bath and then dinner of grilled cheese and watched a video together and then it was time for bed, and they were sleepy and it was nearly 7.30p which was grand, except if you did that math I suggested above you probably also realized that Saturday night was when the switch from Daylight Savings back to ... Daylight Spending(?) took place, which meant that thought I was putting the girls to bed at 7.30p, they were going to sleep as if they went to bed at 6.30p, which meant that... well, L got up around 4.20a, K around 5a, and I took them downstairs because M had climbed into bed at 12.30-ish (11.30-ish) and wasn't quite ready to get up at 4a (lame-o!).

Sunday was a flurry of highs and lows (L) and K behaving remarkably mature, and M needing to cook and then go to a baby shower that afternoon. But before this, we decided to treat the girls to breakfast out, so went to Luna Park, which has a collection of lunch boxes on display (the Happy Days one is my favorite, I think), as well as a coin-operated Batman car ride, awesome milkshakes, jukeboxes, and booths. In short, a perfect place to go with kids. Except they didn't find anything they wanted to eat. L order a fruit bowl, K the Mickey Mouse pancakes. L saw the pancake and wanted one as well, K said the pancake didn't taste good and ate my bacon, L tried K's pancake and said it didn't taste good and pouted and M and I ate as quickly as we could and retreated. Not our best dining out experience!

The girls got to watch 3 Thomas the Tank Engine videos that morning (they're 12 minutes each, if that buys me any sympathy and/or understanding), and then I resisted the calls for more videos and/or candy. For the rest of the day!

Yay Daddy! Who's the man?

What we did, more or less chronologically (chronically):

had several breakdowns (L)
wanted candy (K&L)
had several other breakdowns (L)
made salad and muffins (M, for her shower)
had several.... (L) you get the idea
went upstairs (me & L after a breakdown and we lay in our bed and read until she fell asleep, at which point I went back downstairs and helped "explain" to K that she was not going to get any candy and/or videos.)
drove away (M, for her shower)
watched some horse videos on my computer, including a 2-part one of a colt being born. I hesitated, but K's already seen similar on Saddle Club, and we're getting to the point where she's curious and aware enough that I think it makes sense to let her see. I nervously waited for her to notice the other videos of horse sex and/or "How to deliver a baby in a car," neither of which I was excited about watching with (or without) my 5 1/2 yo daughter), and though she didn't notice (or want to see?) the horse sex one, she did ask for the delivery of a baby, which I hesitantly agreed to. But it was done using a life-sized model, and didn't interest her much. But she's a very aware girl, and I know more of it sank in than was immediately evident, so I'm trying to anticipate and prepare for questions, or at least get ready to redirect her in M's direction. (K&me)
cleaned the kitchen while K did more art (me)
woke up (L)
wanted candy or videos (K&L)
explained "No!" (me)
did art (K&L)
had several breakdowns (L)

But here's something else that happened:

After a ton of frustration with a bead project, during which L had several collapses, threw beads and crumpled up a drawing she'd done, she returned to the kitchen table and worked at it again and finished it. This was huge. She's at a stage where she gets very frustrated at not being able to do things as well as K can, and then throws stuff, breaks things, crumples papers.... So coming back and continuing to try... that's huge. HUGE!

We did bath, which involved a lot of mermaiding and some hairwashing and some photo ops:

two "mermaids" conversing(?)
the cool thing about this is that they put on their goggles
and submerge their heads and don't think about the fact
that they're holding their breaths.
I've counted to 20 before, and L can easily stay down that long!

Later, I cooked fish and made rice and the girls ate pretty well and M came home w/ some cupcakes from the shower and the girls got to have cupcakes and then L told me she was tired and rather than say something funny like "Well, why do you think that is?" I picked her up like she asked and we snuggled on the couch until M and K joined us and then we went upstairs where we finished the evening with some books, a brief Belle story (but this time K wanted to go back to the barn, a return to horses, which is a significant shift), and then bed.

But before bed, one last heart-warming (and representative) father-daughter exchange:

L (snuggled against me in bed): Daddy, why do we call it gath when we gath?
me (realizing this wasn't going to really explain anything): Uh... because it's gas.
L (uncomprehending but accepting): Oh. (pause) Daddy?
me (enjoying the snuggle): Uh huh?
L (grinning around her pacifier): I juth gathed.
me: I know.
K (laughing on the opposite side of the bed): Uh, we KNOW! Pa-lease!

you can ring my....

2011-10-24T15:44:00.000-07:00

... Belle

Belle stories - we've got 'em. Oh boy have we got 'em!

Belle stories are a year old now and a staple of our bedtime routines, but they've evolved over the course of the last year.

Two "horses" galloping at the beach
10/24/2011

These stories started as simple, ~5 minute tales about 2 girls (coincidentally named K & L) and a horse named Belle who followed them home one day. The girls want to keep the horse, and their parents think it's imaginary (though this is a subtle touch that seems to have passed over the heads of my usual listeners) so they say "fine." And the girls get to have a horse in the house. That was the beginning.

I'd already been contemplating writing a couple of short stories like this, when, a year ago, we were in the final hour of a 5 hour drive back from Walla Walla and the girls were done being in the car after being in a hotel room for 2 nights, and I started telling them about these 2 girls and a horse named Belle, and they wouldn't let me stop for the remainder of the ride. I think we did 4 or 5 different stories that first afternoon.

Since then, the stories have become a vital step in the bedtime process, coming immediately after toothbrushing which follows jammie-getting-into which follows bath.

The stories evolved into a more complex formula with 2 horses (Belle and Delilah, coincidentally sharing names with 2 of the Saddle Club horses) and a stable that was first in the backyard and then later moved up onto a hill behind the girls' house. They also grew from the original 5 minute tales to something over 20 minutes and occasionally more than 30 minutes. Various humorous and not-so-humorous happenings happened, including sleepovers, trailrides, encounters with other animals, horse shows, etc. Not so oddly, many of the supporting characters shared characteristics with Saddle Club characters, but I did my best to steer things toward new story lines and a new character or two.

We had a standard starting point each night: One morning K&L woke up and went to the window to see what the weather was. (The weather was generally dependent on our actual weather, but not always.) The girls get dressed and slip out of the house, early on with their dog, and later, after Lucy's death, on their own, and go up to the stables.

The girls, and K especially, insist on hearing a story every night. The nights I paddle are hard because she knows there won't be a story that night (though M has started telling stories about when she was a little girl, or when K or L was a baby, and that seems to be an acceptable substitute).

Over the last year, K's interest in Saddle Club and in horses in general has moderated a bit, and now there's a new focus on mermaids and so the Belle Stories have evolved into stories focused around a mermaid named K and another named Cassandra, and a third who is named L but who wanted to go home to her parents so isn't often included. There are no horses (excepting a seahorse that I, very creatively I thought, developed from Belle who needed to be turned into something sea-related when K turned into a mermaid from a little girl), and there is absolutely nothing named 'Belle,' yet these stories continue on as the Belle Stories.

Our bedtime routine lately has shifted: first I tell a story about something that happened to me when I was a boy (recent examples: when I went "scoopa" diving with sharks, getting my dog Debbie (best dog ever!)) - this is primarily a story for L, so she can then fall asleep during the Belle story, which she rarely has any interest in hearing, then books, usually one per daughter, then L curls up against me and sometimes falls asleep and sometimes just snuggles in (either way, I love this part of the evening) and I tell a Belle story to K, who is almost always interested and sometimes quite upset when I finish it up for the evening.

Things I've learned over the course of the last year of story telling: 1) just because I think I know where the story should go, this doesn't mean it's going to go there, 2) trying to resist the girls' ideas about where the story should go is futile, 3) letting the girls have some control (asking "what was K wearing?" and "what did L say?" "No, I'm Barbie, not L!" "Ok, what did Barbie say?") goes a long way toward keeping them engaged, and 4) sometimes the least expected turns end up being the most enjoyable/fruitful/interesting.

We're still refining the process, obviously, and I can imagine that L might decide she wants a different type of story tailored for her interests, now that Belle has become a variation of "Mermaid Island," though there are enough differences in personality between the girls that I wouldn't be shocked if L didn't follow K's lead regarding stories. (L is the one who likes to take books off by herself and "read" them aloud: "And then the bird said 'You can't go there because you can't go there and so you can't go there. And the bird didn't go there." Maybe she'll be my writer?)

Some evenings I dread the story telling. I don't particularly want to talk about mermaids, I don't want to have to come up with a story line that doesn't make narrative sense to me. And then I remember that all of this is a passing phase in this thing called life and I think about lying in the middle of my bed after dinner with one daughter on my right side and the other snuggled in on my left and I realize that it's just about the best place in the world I could be right then.

And so we start:

One morning, K was swimming in the lagoon with Cassandra as the sun made sparkles in the water, and Cassandra said to her, "Come, I want to show you something" so they ducked down and swam through the underwater tunnel with the dolphins and the seahorse until they were out beyond the island where the water was blue and clouds were white in the sky, and Cassandra pointed down and said "If we swim down there you'll see something you've never seen before...."

... oh we're going...

2011-10-17T07:16:00.000-07:00

... to try out our new grass skirts....

I was recently on Maui, and while there, bought 2 gen-u-ine Hawaiian "grass" skirts, made in the Philippines and sold in a tacky tourist shop in Kaahumanu Center. But what the heck.

K&L were thrilled, at least for a few minutes, during which I managed to capture this short video:

Near the end of it, you'll see L beginning to have a collapse of some sort (not sure what it was about - after all, if I cataloged every collapse, my brain would overflow in a matter of hours - but it, combined with the general analysis that the grass was "pokey" meant that this was the only occasion they really spent much time in their outfits. Which is fine. Expected even.

Maybe next time I'll bring home one for M...

For comparison and contrast, here's a photo of my grandmother (Mom's mom) in a grass skirt, not having a breakdown, in front of a palm tree:

This would have been on Oahu, probably Waikiki in the early 1920s (other photos of her with my grandfather, both of them looking quite stylish and dashing in riding outfits, are dated 1924), and as a grandson all I can say is that the woman I knew never seemed the sort to try on a grass skirt, much less pose for a photo. Who knew!

Which only goes to underscore just how little we understand/appreciate our elders when we're little. Which is another way of saying that I'm sure there are photos K&L will find that will open their eyes about their parents and grandparents.

At least I hope so.

... it's too late baby, now it's too late...

2011-10-02T09:21:00.000-07:00

Note: I'm posting this from Haiku, Maui, where I'm taking care of some family business and generally not taking advantage of the tropical environment (though I did go paddling last Weds evening!). Which is to say, I'm missing M and the girls, and I found this, unposted, so decided to go ahead and use it. Nothing new here, but nothing out of date either.

----

One of the most amazing things about parenting is just how freakin' quickly the world changes, and when I say "the world" I mean the immediate world surrounding you. In other words, your children.

Sisters, First Day of School

Sept. 7, 2011

Which makes blogging a near-perfect technology for writing about parenting, because it allows you to change directions quickly, to post short, insightful tales, to keep up with the speed of change.

At least as long as you write and post your observations.

Unfortunately, to do that, you have to actually WRITE and then POST. Up with which I've not been keeping. So this is an attempt to catch everyone up.

Since the last significant post of any length, the girls and M have been to Birmingham (AL) and back, having spent a wonderful week+ with their grandmother and cousins. And from all accounts, it was a good visit that included a fair amount of swimming, some mani/pedicures that lasted through to their returns, a visit to the zoo, movies with the cousins, a brush with head lice and strep throat (neither of which seems to have made the trip back!), and a tropical storm that dumped enough rain that Grandmama's yard was under 15 inches of water. As I said, all in all a successful trip.

And one aspect of the trip that was especially heartening for me (and M, I'm sure) was that K and L were in good form, well behaved and charming. K is blossoming into quite a girl, at times becoming nearly responsible and considerate. At times. And L seems to be entering a phase of somewhat moderated tantrums. In fact both girls seem to be in pretty good "places" at the moment. Which makes life easier for M and me.

Except that I had a great, a witty and heart-warming and poignant post written up about how awful K was behaving towards her little sister. A post no one will read since it is now out of date. And will be until the next phase of the cycle....

Also since the last major post - school has begun, and we now have both a kindergartener and a preschooler. Both girls in school. Which, believe it or not, is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's... sharp(?) because they're both in school all morning. And o the other hand, it's ... also sharp(?) because L is only 1/2 day, and thus, instead of 2 drives of 40 minutes total each, there are 3, the dropoff, the pickup and the secondary pickup. Still, it's pretty exciting to have them both in school. And we have the Montessori bills to prove it!

At the moment, the major news for me is K. She's somehow managed in the last couple of months to almost grow up. She looks and acts and sounds like nothing so much as a young girl who's .... well, growing up.

She helps her sister out, she offers comfort and reassurance, she watches over her (she's nothing if not an eldest child!) and does her best to keep her out of trouble. Except when she's stirring the pot herself, which she also does. But overall, she's lots of fun, and according to M, she was a joy to be around for much of the Alabama trip.

L too is growing up, though for the time being, the gap between 5.5 and 3.5 seems larger than it has before. L still seems like a toddler, and is responsive to the vagaries of toddlerhood, just as K was. She's easily frustrated (more so than K was, perhaps, because she sees no reason why she shouldn't be able to do exactly what K is able to do), loving and volatile, sweet and mean. She's exactly what she's supposed to be, in other words.

First Day of School
Sept. 7, 2011

... we've only just begun...

2011-09-21T23:59:00.000-07:00

.. to adjust ...

Our Preschooler
(with kelp)

L has now been going to school officially for 2 weeks, and it's been an adjustment for us all. I don't mean in any huge blowout ways, but in small ways and in realizations that our baby is now pushed out into the hard mean world (the "hard, mean world" that is Montessori school, I should note, a very different hard and mean than other parts of this world).

She's been tired out by the experience, but we're all managing. She has her breakdowns, but always has, and to be honest, I don't notice anything hugely different in either frequency or depth of breakdown. She's begun bringing home some of her work, a calendar she made (this is huge, because she's watched now for 2 years while K has brought home calendars, and finally she's got one up on the "frigidator"), a couple of books she's made of basic letters. There's been her first permission slip for her first field trip.

And then there are the moments that touch a parent's heart, even if just momentarily:

M: What's your favorite thing about school?
L: Ummm.... the book loft.
(I can see this, since she loves books and will frequently take one off and "read" it out loud to herself)
M: Oh, do you go up in the book loft?
L: No.
M: No? Why not?
L: There's no one to help me down.
M&me: :<

me: Who did you play with today?
L: No one.
me: No one?
L: No.
me: What about K? Did you play with K at recess?
L: No. She was over there and I wasn't.
me: :<

me: What did you have for snack today?
L: Nothing.
M: Nothing?
me (to M): She ate her lunch in the van on the way home.
M: You didn't eat your lunch at school?
L: No.
me&M: Why not?
L: Because.
M: What was there for snack?
L: Carrots and Veggie Bootie.
M: Did you like that?
L: Yeah.
M&me: So you ate snack?
L: No.
me: Why not?
L: Because no one tapped me.
me: No one tagged you?
K: No, not 'tagged,' it's 'tapped' Daddy.
me: Oh, because no one tagged you, L?
L: Yeah, no one tagged me.
:< :< :<

She doesn't want to have grapes at lunch because she can't open the container without spilling them, so we've been giving her pluots. But she's not even eating these, often. At least not until we pick her up.

I think fundamentally she's still getting her feet under her, and I suspect she's just hanging low, trying to figure things out. And with Montessori there's a lot to figure out. It's self-driven to a large degree, so she doesn't get told what to do every minute. Thus, she doesn't do anything.

There's also the question of how reliable our information feed is. L will tell us first one thing and then another contradictory thing. Her teacher says she's doing well and is a "joy to have in class," but she also told me that L is "one of the quiet ones" which tells me she isn't yet being her full self. Ask anyone: L "quiet?" Ha!

M reminds me that K went through the same thing, and that she adjusted to the point that now she's got initiative and confidence. L will get there as well. It's just that it takes time for her father's chest to stop aching.

And the first kid that's openly mean to her will get a bop in the face. From me!

definitions: dreamember / oak

2011-09-20T04:28:00.000-07:00

dreamember - verb, to recall something that happened in a dream.

usage:
(bedroom door opens, revealing a disheveled little girl)
me: Ugh... what time...? Hi K.
K: Daddy?
me (whispering): Let's whisper so we don't wake up your sister.
K (whispering and coming closer): Daddy?
me: Yeah? Come snuggle in between us.
K (crawling into bed between M and me): Is it morning yet?
me: Sort of. It's 5. But it's 7 your time, so it's morning.
K: Well, Daddy?
me: Yeah?
K: I had a dream and it woke me up.
me (putting my arm around my oldest daughter and reveling in the facts that she is back home with her mother and sister, and that she's still young enough to want to crawl into bed with us): What happened in your dream? Do you remember?
K: Yeah, there was someone, I don't dreamember who, and they were in the swimming pool....

oak - noun, the middle part of an egg, especially a hard boiled egg
usage:
me: What are you going to eat for breakfast? K? K? Do you want a hard boiled egg? I made hard boiled eggs.
K: I only like the outside white part.
me: I know. I'll take the inside out.
L: I like the oak.
me: You want your sister's yolk?
L (nodding): I like the oak. (takes it from me as I also set a plate with the white in front of K)
K (starting to eat her white): I only like this part.
me: I know
L: I like both. I like the outside and the oak. (puts it into her mouth)
K (gagging at the sight): Ugh! I can't... yuck!
M and me: (laughter)
me: You don't have to eat it K.
K (still drive-heaving): I know but .... ugh!
L (grinning): Actually, I don't like the oak either.

... keep me hanging on the telelphone...

2011-09-17T04:25:00.000-07:00

Scenes from a Phone Call, vol. 2

Another snippet from a Birmingham-Seattle call:

M: ... and we went to the zoo, didn't we girls?
(chaotic speaking in the background)
M: The girls would like to talk to you.
K&L (on separate phones, a new phenomenon for them): Hi DaHiDadaddyCanyouhearcanmeyouhearme?
me: Uh, yeah! How are you.
K: Good Daddy. I miss you.
me: I miss...
L: I miss you too Dada!!
me: ... you. I miss you bo...
K: We went to...
L: We went...
me:...th too.
K: ...the zoo. There's...
L: ... to the...
K: ... baby lions...
L: ... zoo, yeah, baby...
K: ... and we can name ...
L: ... lions. And we...
K: ... them what...
L: ... can name...
me: Whoa! What? Baby lions?
K&L: Yeah! And we can name them!!
me: What are you going to name them?
K: Well, they're boy lions Daddy.
L: Yeah, they're boy...
K: And we can name them.
L: .. lions. And we can
K: And I think maybe...
L: ... I think maybe...
me: What?
K: Maybe...
me: What about 'Paul?'
K: What?
L: What?!
me: What about 'Paul?'
K: What do you mean?
L: Yeah, what do you mean?!?
me: For the lion. As a name.
K: I don't...
L: Yeah, I don't... (pause, waiting for her sister)
K: ... I don't think...
L: Yeah, I don't think....
me: It's a good name. It's my name!
K: Oh yeah.
L (laughing): Oh yeah! I guess we forgotted!
...
slightly later
L: Daddy, how many phones do you think we're using?
me: Ummm, 2?
L (laughing): Yeth! How many phones are you using Dada?
me: 1.
L: What? That's rethponsible!!
me: I miss you girls. I love you!
K&L: We miss you too. We love you Daddy!!

...suspended in my masquerade...

2011-09-15T04:30:00.000-07:00

or, Scenes from a Phone call, vol 1

M and the girls were in Alabama for a week visiting her mother (Grandmama), while I stayed home and worked on getting our studio insulated, a long-delayed step in a project that started before K was born. Ultimately I'll move my office out of the dining room and into the studio. But this is going to take some doing, especially in terms of explaining things to the girls.

L: You working on the studio Dada?
me: Yup, while you're in Alabama.
L: What ith we going to use it for?
me: My office. I'll move my office into it.
L: But Dada, what will we use the dining room for?

uh... dining?

But we digress...

In any case, the separation meant that we had numerous phone "conversations," often early in the morning, my time. I was up early (5-ish) every day, heading to work on the 6.45a water taxi. Because I could. And because it meant that I could both get a good day's work in, and be home in time to work on the studio.

So one morning I got to talk w/ M and K, and I was struck by just how “growed up” K seems. She’s using the phone like a regular tool (L, in contrast, still uses it like a toy, nodding and/or shaking her head while I talk to her, rather than responding audibly).

She told me all about the things she'd been doing, swimming and diving "on the steps but not on the bottom step except Mommy threw the diving stick one time on the bottom step and I couldn't get it but then I did." Nice work! It was fun to actually be able to have a conversation with my eldest daughter, especially since this phase doesn't mean she's ready to push me away.

me (ending the conversation because my oatmeal is getting cold and my water taxi won't wait): I love you K. I miss you.
K: I love you too Daddy. I miss you.
me: I miss snuggling with you.
K: I miss snuggling with you too Daddy.

She even came back on after we’d said goodbye, to say “one more thing.”

K: Uh, Daddy?
me: Yeah K?
K: How is the studio going?

How indeed! Not as fast as you are apparently growing up!

It’s not hard for me to imagine her at 15 or 20, though if she’s as interested in me and what I’m doing at both those ages, I’ll be thrilled beyond speech. I have to steel myself for the reality that she and L are very likely to not really give a darn about their father for a period of 5 to 25 years, starting somewhere between 9 and 12, and lasting through somewhere between 15 and 39.

definitions: day after yesterday / cocopugs

2011-09-13T04:21:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I've managed to regularly post here. In that time the girls and M have been to Alabama and back, and have started school. I'm way behind, suspecting now that I'll never get caught up. I never did manage to post much about our trip to Maui in May.

But... it's Double Definition Tuesday once again, with some new words I learned during one of our Seattle-Birmingham phone calls.

----

day after yesterday - noun, the day prior to the current day (also sometimes
referred to as "yesterday")

usage:
(phone call from Alabama)
M: We miss you too. Here, K wants to say hi. She's eating Cocopuffs.
K: Daddy, Daddy, we got me a new diaper bag and L a new princess dress and
we went swimming and got new water rockets and I like to dive to get the
rockets on the third step but once Mommy accidentally dropped the rocket
on the bottom steps and I got it.
me: Wow! Really?
K: Yeah. And L's dress is kind of too long but she could maybe wear it on
her birthday but it's pink and scratchy and she's wearing it right now.
me: Now?
K: Yeah. In bed. She's still sleeping.
me (trying to start my oatmeal): She is? That's good.
K: Yeah, but her dress is scratchy.
me: Scratchy? You mean the material?
K: Yeah. And it's really too long. It pretty much touches the ground. We
got our nails done yesterday.
me: Your nails done? What color are they?
K: Glittery on my fingers and pink on my toes with a flower on my toes. On
my big toes.
me: Pink with a flower?
K: On my big toes. Yeah.
me: Wow... All of this yesterday?
K: Yeah, the day... the day... the day after yesterday.
me: Right.

Cocopugs - proper noun, a type of breakfast cereal served to small
children by grandparents. Will turn standing milk brown and spike insulin
levels.

usage:
me (continuing above conversation): I love you K. I miss you.
K: I miss you too Daddy. And I love you. My Cocopugs are turning my milk chocolate.
me: Cocopugs, huh? You're really getting spoiled by Grandmama, aren't you?
K: No.
me: No?
K: I like getting spoiled by Grandmama.
me: Well, that's what grandmothers are supposed to do.
K: Bye Daddy! I love you.

... why don't you come with me little girl...

2011-09-11T19:23:00.000-07:00

(edit: added link to earlier post)

... on a water taxi ride!

So I'm waaaaaay behind with things, but rather than try to recap what's happened, I'll aim to get to things in bits and pieces and simply jump ahead to today, 9/11/11. It's an historically significant date, to be sure, but I'm going to sidestep the politics and just focus on a date spent with my younger daughter.

In the morning I'd dragged both girls to the beach to get some exercise and work off some energy (photos to follow in a separate post). Neither of them wanted to go, but M needed some time on her own and I packed them up and drove them down and then they didn't want to leave. But that was morning. This was afternoon.

K had a birthday party this afternoon, which meant some quality time for me and L. Which meant that she suggested "maybe we can do thomthing Dada, like... get a cupcake?" Precedent set (and apparently I failed to write about that, but I could have sworn there was an entry to link to....and there is. Right here)! But no, we weren't going to get a cupcake this time. Instead we were going to catch the water taxi over to the city and back. L was fairly excited about this option, which boded (bade?) well.

The arc of our afternoon went something like this:

upupupupupsteadydowndownDOWNdowndowncrash.

The pictures show this:

Waiting for a... boat
(wearing slightly resort-y clothing)

Aboard and waiting to set sail
(with the prospect of sea lions in the offing)

We'd heard plenty of barking while we waited, and I knew the sea lions hung out at the buoy offshore, so I got us a seat on the starboard side of the boat, figuring we'd get close enough to see them. L told me she'd already seen sea lions at the Birmingham Zoo, but how much cooler to see them in the wild! I thought so, and convinced her the same.

She wanted to go upstairs, no, downstairs, by the window. She wanted the window seat. It was too sunny, where were the sea lions? When were we going to leave? There's the captain. What? There's our captain. What captain? The captain of the boat. Who? That woman. That woman? Yes, she's our captain. The's our captain? Yes.

And we did. We left. And we saw sea lions.

Sea lions splashing around the buoy, sea lions lying on the buoy, sea lions eating all the salmon in Elliott Bay!

Picture of Dada
(and she's turning into a decent photographer!)

One of the things I love is when L asks to use my camera. We gave her one when she turned 3, but she likes mine better, and takes fairly good photos with it. I want to encourage her, so I do my best to bite back my nervousness at handing my 3yo a not-cheap digital SLR. But when I do she fires off 5 or 10 shots in 4 or 6 seconds, and some of them turn out well. I think she's managed to get the best pictures of me that anyone has in the last couple of years.

On the way back to West Seattle,
(blood sugars low and tempers hot)

We rode, we saw the sea lions, we got close to downtown at which point L was hot and tired. She wanted to know what we were going to do. Well, get off the boat and stand in line to get back on. But what are we going to DO? I told her we were going to ride it back home and she slumped in her seat with arms crossed, muttering: "I don't like riding the water taxi!" When I asked why not, she said "Because it's boring!"

She perked up a bit when I told her she could sit in a row on her own. She sat behind me and held onto my arm (her default when she needs comfort). I could tell she was exhausted and probably needed to eat something.

Leaving the boat, she tripped on the gangplank going up to the dock while I was pulling her along and she tripped and fell and started crying and I carried her the rest of the way to the car. A woman walking behind us handed her a small American flag, which L held tightly while she cried into my shoulder.

L feel asleep on the 4 minute drive from Seacrest Park to home. This girl was running on empty!

Bed for both girls by 6.15p, and trust me, they need the rest! (So do we!!)

it's getting mighty.... quiet

2011-08-29T04:56:00.000-07:00

M and the girls are out of town for a week, and the house is crazy quiet. You'd think I like that, and there's aspects of it that are nice (I don't have to tiptoe through the outer room on my way in/out of my bedroom, I can listen to music and read the paper at breakfast, I can shower without interruption, leave the house at the planned time....), but I miss my girls (all 3 of them) and am looking forward to their return. There's something about this time on my own that makes it even more of a contrast - it's the first since Lucy died. Our domain isn't named "loudlucy" for nothing. So I'm moving around, getting up in the morning and crawling into bed at night in a house even more library-like than the last time M took the girls to see her mother.

I've got tons of projects to finish up, and quite a bit of garden maintenance too, but in the morning when I wake up I'm aware of the emptiness around me, and realize just how much a part of my life these various females are. When everyone is home, it's crazy, yes. And yet here I am wishing I could see them.

Last night K got on the phone and asked "How is the studio going Daddy?"

When did she get that old, old enough to know that I'm supposed to be working on the studio while she's out in Alabama visiting her grandmother, old enough to remember and to ask me? I felt like I was talking to a 15yo rather than to a 5yo. L on the other hand, had missed dinner and fallen asleep half on K's bed and half on the floor. M said she just moved her into her own bed (a crib at Grandmama's house). She's a "growned up" 3, but she's still 3, and travel and visiting with cousins is hard work.

When I said goodbye I told K I loved her.
K: Goodbye Daddy. I love you too.
It doesn't get much better than that.

So for the next week, I'm working at work and working at home, I'm paddling and feeling like I shouldn't be doing that since there's so much to get done. But I know the week will zoom by and soon it'll be Tuesday and I'll be picking everyone up from the airport. Until then, it's good to be reminded that what I sometimes wish for in the chaos of day-to-day living (silence and peace) is not what I truly want. Sure it's nice to have now and then, for a few hours or maybe even a day at a time, but after that it's disconcerting. Now, time to get back to work!

Oh yeah, and one more thing - I know M is going to need a break when they get back. There's nothing like being the solo parent to drain parental resources. She does a fantastic job, though she'd sometimes claim otherwise, but she'll need some time to herself. To be reminded of how much she wants the chaos.

.... so this old world must still be spinning round...

2011-08-24T04:29:00.000-07:00

... and I still love you...

Post-ice cream
(pre-bedtime)

For me, just about the worst parenting situation is the one where I've lost complete control of one or both girls.

Neither M nor I manage particularly well with poorly behaved children. And part of being a child is being poorly behaved on occasion.

We don't like being those parents who overreact to behavior that probably should be ignored and/or dealt with using humor. Luckily, M is pretty good about using humor, and I've learned a bit from her about how to disarm seemingly humorless situations. But I haven't learned enough. Maybe when I'm 80.... (which reminds me of that Mark Twain quote: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”)

Recently we've begun wondering if we're turning into "that couple" and "that family," the one that all the other parents talk about. ("Honey, I'd prefer if our kids don't go up there. They'll learn all sorts of bad habits and behavior from 'those girls.' I'm not sure what M&P imagine they're doing, but I couldn't live that way, children who show no respect, who've wrapped them around their grimy little fingers.").

We worry, are we raising out-of-control children who run roughshod over us? I'm (probably) overreacting/exaggerating (slightly). I hope. But that's what it feels like at times. Like a night last week.

We both knew that the girls were exhausted. They'd been going to a day-camp at their school, which means they've got to be "on" from 8.30a to 3p, which means they're drained by the time they get home, which means they tend to collapse over small things and/or get wound up in ways that are hard to diffuse.

So we knew they needed an early bedtime, and I had them in the tub by shortly after 6p, aiming for a 6.30 reading time. They didn't want to get out. They wanted to dry themselves. I'm working on giving them more freedom to do things they want to do, so I said they could dry themselves, even though I figured it would mean trails of soggy footprints leading from the bathtub across the living room and upstairs to their bedroom. But they came up, mostly dry, and then we struggled with getting them dressed. I'd already told them there would be no story. We were running too late. And if things were delayed much longer, there would be no books either.

K brushes her teeth and is on track to get dressed and snuggle in for a book. But not so much L. When I've brushed K's back teeth and am just sending her out to get some jammies, L is running naked, back and forth across the room. So K hops up and joins her little sister. And now I have 2 girls, one in diapers, one nude, both getting more and more wound up, right when things should be quieting down.

And the thing is, I can't help laughing when L races out of our bedroom, first naked and then wearing her bright red Monkey underpants, like some tiny superhero, intent on saving the world.

It's "nearly naked girl" to the rescue!!

I make sure to not be smiling whenever she ricochets back into our room. There's nothing that spurs her on like obvious enjoyment from her audience - which is part of the problem. K is a ready and willing appreciator, and L plays to her all the time. Including on this particular evening.

And where L will eventually wear herself out and collapse, K gets more and more wired the more exhausted she becomes, which, translated (and skipping a longer, boring description of the events) means that when it is tuck-in time, she isn't having it.

I do my best to get them into bed, suggesting bedtime songs, recommending lying quietly if they can't sleep, finally closing the gate at the top of the stairway to go downstairs in search of their mother, leaving the girls yelling and screaming alternately for me and M.

I let this go on a bit, having headed outside to find M and let her know that L&K want to say goodnight to her. She is over at the neighbors' watering, so I go back inside and after I'm good and fed up, head back upstairs where I tell the girls that it is past time to get into bed and be quiet.

K: "I can't sleep up here."
L: "I can't sleep up here either."
me: "It's time to go to bed."
K: "Can I sleep in the living room?"
L: "Me too?"
me: "No. Climb into bed and lie quietly.
L: "I want Mama!"
me: "She's out watering."
K: "I want Mama!!"
L: "I'm going to get her.
me (closing and locking the gate): "No, I'll see if she can come up. You get into bed."
K: "No!"
L: "No!!"
me: "Then you'll lose privileges." (this is our standard approach, which is probably not the best and is often not particularly effective any longer, and which I very likely pulled out much much too soon)
K: "I don't care."
me: "Ok, no sweets tomorrow. No juice, no dessert." (I've been feeling less and less comfortable with sugars in our diet anyway, so this was an easy call for me. But probably a mistake.)
K: "I'm not going to bed."
L (arms folded): "Me either!!"

Things deteriorated until M climbed the stairs and took over for me. She let them try to sleep downstairs in the living room. They each got up once to ask us something. Finally they both fell asleep there in the bright evening light, and I carried them one by one up to their beds.

Contemplative K, early July

I'm left wondering what I could have done differently. What do you do, once a child refuses, to your face, to behave? What effective punishment is there at this point? It's particularly difficult for me when faced with a "No!" yelled directly at my face.

Options are to leave them to scream and yell upstairs (but I wanted them to go to sleep), or to let them out and go into my own room and give them the run of the house (but, see the concern above about becoming "those parents"). The temptation is there to spank, but we're not spankers, and I don't see that as being particularly useful.

photo friday: honu

2011-08-19T20:40:00.000-07:00

A picture from our May trip to Maui:

At the Honu tank
K&L at the Maui Aquatic Center, Maalaea

What was even more exciting was that K and I also saw turtles (and a dolphin) from Mom's deck.

... your mother and i...

2011-08-15T04:54:00.000-07:00

L has always been good with words. At least good with repeating them (minus a slight lisp that I tend to play up a bit in this blog). She started talking early, and has hardly paused since. I suppose there's something typically second-child about that, but I'm too lazy to do a search and find references. Seems likely though - she had K's example from early on.

But where she has been able to pronounce and use complicated words and sentences for years now, there's some discrepancy between usage and comprehension.

A recent example:

me (getting out the glass with the toothbrushes in it): Which brush do you want to use, L? K, come brush your teeth!
L: The printheth one!
me: That's K's toothbrush. K!
L (crestfallen look, though we go through this most every night): I want a printheth bruth!
me: I know. Maybe the next time your mother gets more toothpaste she can get a princess brush for you?
L: But thee did!
me: She did? Did what?
L (pointing): Get more toothpathe! Your mother and we went to Target and got more toothpathe!
me (my mother?!?): Uh, oh. Well, maybe we need to ask her to look for a princess brush next time.
L (arms crossed): Oh, I gueth! I want the Light McQueen one!
me: The red one is yours, right?
L: Yeah! K's is the blue one!!
me (handing L the brush): K, if you don't brush your teeth you'll end up looking like me!

... to have a couple of girls like her...

2011-08-13T05:43:00.000-07:00

... is truly a dream come true...

"Let's play horthie..."
"Yeah, and this bowl is our water trough...."

"Pretend!"

This is a common suggestion/command from K and from L these days. For which both M and I are grateful. We're big believers in imagination and imaginative playing. And we've arrived at some magical point where the girls are willing and able to play amongst themselves, pretending and creating games with horses, dolls, buckets of grass ("hay"), towels, legos, horses, the plastic "kitchen," pots and pans, playdoh, horses.... you get the idea.

What's funny about this though, is that frequently the command "pretend" is an instruction to do whatever it is that they are already doing.

K: Are we still playing horses?
L: Yeah!
K: Ok, pretend that I'm the horse and you're the owner.
L (pouting): I want to be the horth!
K: No! I'm the horse!
me (starting dinner): Why don't you both be the horses? And I can be the owner.
L: Yeah, and Momma is the annana owner.
K: And we're in the stable and I'm the black stallion and you can't ride me.
L: Yeah, you can't ride us. And pretend we're on the floor.
me: Ok, you're on the floor.
L: Pretend!
me: Right. Pretend! And you're the black stallion. What about you L?
L: I.... I'm the wild stallion too!
me: Ok.
K: And pretend you're married to the annana owner, and...
me: You mean Momma?
K: Yeah, and you're married and you both own us
L: Yeah, you both own us, and pretend you're married.
me: Ok. I can manage that.
K: And pretend I'm hungry but I don't want to eat.
L: Yeah, pretend we're hungry.
me: I'm still pretending I'm married to your mother.
K: You can do both.
me: Oh, ok!
M (walking in): Hey guys. How're you?
me: We're pretending. They're horses and you and I are the owners. And we're pretending they're on the floor and that we're married!
M: You and me?
me: Married. Not on the floor. They're on the floor. Pretend.
K: Yeah, and I'm the wild stallion.
L: And I'm the wild stallion too.
me: Wait, I thought you were the black stallions?
K: We're both.
L: Yeah, we're the wild stallion and the black stallion too.
me: And we're married.
M: Yeah?
me: Yeah. You have to pretend.
M: I suppose....
me (cutting carrots): And pretend that I'm cutting up carrots.
L: Yeah, and I'm in the stable but I want to get out.
K: We want to get out because we're wild.
me: Because you're the wild stallions.
K: Yeah.
L: Yeah!
me (opening the oven): And pretend that I'm opening the oven.
K: Ok.
L: Ok.
M (giving me an odd look): Uh...
me: PreTEND!
M: Ok!
me (starting to set the table): And pretend that I'm starting to set the table and dinner is almost ready, so if anyone needs to change out of work clothes or go to the bathroom before they eat, they should go now.
M: Uh, Pretend?
me: Yeah!
K: Yeah!
L: Yeah!!

... all the people stared....

2011-08-10T04:47:00.000-07:00

... as if we were both quite insane... or A Date with my Daughter.

A picture I've probably used before...
but I don't have any handy from this last week....

K was invited to a birthday party last Saturday. The hidden import of this is that L was NOT invited to a birthday party last Saturday. Which means there were complications.

I've never been one of those parents who wanted to make everything exactly equal with both children. It seems obvious to me that when one is older than the other (and maybe even when they're the same age), the experiences each has will be different. They're at different stages of development, have different interests and abilities and.... blah blah blah... I'm sure you're as interested in this line of reasoning as L was.

In any case, M prepared to take K to the party and I inherited a sobbing L. Who stopped sobbing when I suggested that she and I go ride a "city bus" down to the West Seattle Junction where there happens to be a Cupcake Royale, which happens to serve one of L's favorite food groups: sugar. She couldn't get her shoes on fast enough. We were walking out the door before M & K had pulled out of the driveway.

It's a several block walk up to the bus stop. Something between 1/4 and 1/2 mile. Which means that I fully expected to be carrying L part of the way. We made it roughly 50 yards. But that's ok, I'm strong, and she was in a good mood (drying tears leaving visible tracks on her cheeks). We wandered up to California Ave. where we waited in front of our favorite local pub grub place (Circa).

Taking a small child out in public is always "interesting." Especially so for someone like me who's instinctive approach to the world is to lay low, not be noticed, observe without being observed. That's pretty much impossible with a small child.

First, there's the constant question of whether or not she'll need to go potty. I made sure L went before we left, but that's never a guarantee of anything, and if there's one thing I dislike about parenting, it's needing to take one of the girls into a public restroom.

This aversion had nothing to do with the potty experience itself and has everything to do with the restrooms. I don't particularly mind needing to help one of my daughters in the bathroom, but I don't particularly like going to a public restroom even when it's just *me*. Add the complication of a child who is lower to the ground (and thus, lower to the germy surfaces), who is not particularly conscious of what to avoid touching, who doesn't seem to notice when clothing is dragging.... it's a horror I prefer to avoid.

So there's that. But there's also the small person's observations of the world that, while frequently interesting and/or eye-opening, can also be a challenge. Like "That lady is fat Dada." And when I mutter something about not pointing to other people, "But that's ok, everybody is different. Right Dada?" Uh, well, right, but how about we don't talk about it at the top of our 3 1/2 yo lungs?

Anyway, after a 10 minute wait, during which we observed passing people, trucks, dogs, and at least 1 bus that was not our bus, our bus pulled up. I had already prepped L about how you tell which bus is yours (teaching opportunity! "see, they each have a number, and ours is '55' so that's how you know what bus to get on." "But Dada, you can tell me, right?" Sure. Right.). It pulls up and the front door opens with a smelly blast of compressed air, and we climb aboard and wander back to a seat immediately behind the handicapped seating.

There are questions about seatbelts, about wheelchairs, about the bus itself. There is standing up while holding onto a handle, there is sitting in my lap, there is sitting on the seat next to the window, kneeling on the seat next to the window, handling the bell pull, deciding not to pull it, wanting to pull it.... until when, at last, our 7 minute ride is over, she and I pull it together and then get off.

I was going to get her a mini cupcake. So we get her a large one (pink frosting w/ sprinkles, white cake). I wasn't going to have one. So I get a large, caramel frosted one. And a pound of Stumptown Hair Bender! (Yes, we've discovered that we can buy our current favorite espresso roast from Cupcake Royale. Which means we don't have to make a special trip to Capital Hill to buy it.)

We eat, we wipe up crumbs, we wipe faces and hands multiple times. L wants to save the last of her cupcake. I don't want to carry it. Impasse! Until I ask if I can eat it. She and I split it. And then we are off, heading back toward the bus stop to catch another bus.

I notice that Easy Streets was selling Caspar Babypants' new album, but L doesn't want to stop by to buy it. I'm not sure why this is, but I respect her choice. (Note: if you're at all curious what a Nirvana song sounds like when done by an ex-pop musician turned kids entertainer, you should get this album, just for his version of "Sliver." He makes it so obviously a children's song that it makes me look at Curt Cobain in a new light.)

So we wait for the bus and when it comes, climb aboard and this time sit in the high seats so L can see and when I point out how the middle of the bus flexes as we go around turns she is fascinated and we have ourselves a blast, even including my carrying her all the way home.

We finish off our date with some water coloring, some books, and just as I am nudging us towards a nap K and M arrive home and things are transformed into their natural state (chaos).

It's a real treat to get to spend one-on-one time with the girls. We don't do the divide-and-conquer thing often enough, but when we do manage it, I nearly always find that my children are quite pleasant and fun to be with. Saturday with L was a special occasion for me. And the bonus for her, over and above the cupcake, is that now she's ridden 3 "city buses" while K has only ridden 2 (something K has lorded over L for some time now).

definitions: Someone Says / Respectable

2011-07-26T04:57:00.000-07:00

Someone says - noun, a game played by children (and parents) in which someone gives instructions to everyone else, usually prefaced with "someone says" but occasionally not. The someone is trying to catch the others doing what was instructed, even though the instructions were not prefaced by "someone says." Got that?

usage:
me (walking in the front door): Hello the house!
L (running in from the kitchen): Dada! Dada!! We're playing Thomeone Theth!!!
me: What?
L : We're playing Thomeone theth!!
me: Oh yeah?
M (loud whisper from the kitchen): Simon says.
me: Ah!

Respectable - adjective, used to express disgust (?)

usage:
M: It's dinner time.
L: Mama, can I have a treat?
K: Yeah, can we have a special treat?
M: No. It's time for dinner.
L (pouting): Oh!
K (throwing herself face down on the window seat): That's not fair!
M: It isn't?
K (talking into the cushion): No! It's not fair. You're so... respectable!
M: I am?
K: Yeah.
L (arms crossed, lower lip out): Yeah! You're tho rethpectable!
me: What is "respectable?"
K (looking up at me): It's... it's peer (pier?)
me: Oh. Well, it's still dinner time.

... you say "stop" and i say "go go go"....

2011-07-10T04:58:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the fascination of parenting comes from the study in contrasts it provides:

- there's the difference in approach between parents, which can be stressful and/or cause significant upheaval, but luckily M and I tend toward similar approaches, so we dodge this for the most part.

- and then there's the difference in outlook between siblings.

Maui, May 2011

This one provides us with regular opportunities to marvel that the two children we are somehow responsible for can be so entirely unique.

Wednesday morning I was responsible for getting the girls off to summer camp, which translates into "anything I accomplish is largely miracle." But the girls were on their best behavior so things went more or less smoothly. And we're in the "midst" of our summer (where midst = the 2nd or 3rd day), so it's been beautiful, with blue skies and temperatures in the low 80s. Perfect Northwest weather!

Before their carpool arrived, but after I'd finished sunscreening both girls, L tried on a sunhat that was lying discarded after our 4th of July weekend during which it was not worn once, even though it should have been, and when I said "That looks good. You should wear it today to camp" she said "That ladybug hat would be a good summer hat" and I said "That ladybug hat is a winter hat. It's wool!" and L added "I want mittens." I said.... "Ok, fine."

So L walked out the door wearing a pink knitted wool hat and matching wool mittens. (She'd initially wanted to also pack a backup pair of glubs, but at the last moment inexplicably decided against them.) And though I got what I interpret as one of those "does your wife know you're doing this to your daughter" looks from their driver, L was satisfied. I think she had a second coat in her backpack as well.

In contrast, when K walked out the front door and said "My legs are kind of cold," and I told her (because their ride was waiting, and any change in direction would cost us 10-15 minutes) "They'll warm right up. It's going to be warm today," she hesitated just a second, obviously not quite willing to concede anything, but ultimately she nodded and went on down to the waiting car.

vive la différence!

... be sure to wear flowers....

2011-07-08T04:51:00.000-07:00

... around your neck.

(another in an occasional series based on our Maui adventures now long past but about which I'd intended to write.... pretend this is well thought out, funny, and educational, rather than the obviously slap-dashed post that tries to stand primarily on the merit of the accompanying pictures)

One of the highlights of our May visit back to Maui and my mother, sister and nephew, was watching the girls learn to make plumeria leis. This skill is something we learned early in our childhoods, and being able to pass it along to my daughters means a lot to me.

We picked flowers in Mom's yard, and I was reminded of all the "basic" knowledge I take for granted but which needs to be taught. Like don't stand directly beneath the flowers when you pick them. The sap drips, and it's white which means it's not good for you and it'll stain your clothing which in turn means a melt-down or three in our young family. So that's one bit of info I hope they remember. Another: best to pick the flowers in the morning, before the heat/wind of the day does damage.

I did most of the picking. And then we settled in on Mom's porch to thread flowers onto lei needles and white thread.

K, intent on threading properly

And the result, a hand-made-by-K lei

And a companion hand-made-by-L lei

It was a special morning for me. And I think they enjoyed it too....

definitions: frigidator / pillow theet

2011-07-05T05:02:00.000-07:00

drinking from the firehose edition:

frigidator - noun, an appliance found in most kitchens, used to keep food... frigid.

usage:
me: Dinner!
K (coming in from the living room): What's for dinner?
me: Chicken.
K : I don't eat meat! Member?
me: Yeah, but sometimes you do.
K: Only 'lumi 'lami. What else is there?
me: This is it. Pretend this is salami.
K: No! (foot stamp) I'm going to see what else is in the frigidator.

pillow theet - noun, like a regular theet, but for a pillow.

usage:
M: L, do you want this one with the heart on it? Or the butterfly?
L: What??
M: Do you want this one? Or this one?
L: What Mama?
M: Do you want this pillow...
L: Pillow theet?
M: ?!?
L: That one. With the butterfly. I want that pillow theet!!!
M: Ok. Whew!

... god save the.... country?

2011-07-04T19:35:00.000-07:00

In honor of our country's birthday, we....

...made ourselves some crowns:

What better way to celebrate what was, in essence the wholesale rejection of the British Monarchy and all it represents? Kind of like when kids turn their backs on their parents' lifestyles, values and dreams.....

And then we walked in the largest 4th of July parade in all of West Seattle (rumored):

Truth in advertising - this photo actually depicts a pre-enactment that took place on 3 July, during our walk to the library, which inexplicably was open on a Sunday! Imagine our shock and joy. Imagine our loud discussions over whether to borrow a DVD of Horton Hears a Who (my choice) and "the printheth movie!!!" (L's choice). And guess which one we came home with?

... these pants are made for....?!?

2011-06-30T19:35:00.000-07:00

or:

What happens when dad leaves his pants lying around....

6/28/11

It strikes me that they're having just a little too much fun.

... you can't hide those.... cryin' eyes...

2011-06-27T20:40:00.000-07:00

Note: This is a late post slightly about Father's Day, and mostly about The Princess and the Frog. I'm late, but better than than nothing, I always say....

6/19/2011
(photo by K)

Father's Day, was notable for several reasons:

I got up at 5.20a to go paddling.
When I got up, I found a fresh bag of Stumptown coffee waiting for me next to the espresso maker! (Stumptown is our new go-to coffee. West Seattle needs a Stumptown!!)
And a box of salted caramels!!
I went for a solo paddle off Alki, and though it wasn't entirely satisfying (too much working to stay in the canoe, and not enough working for exercise), it was good. Nice to be on the water at 7.10a on a quiet Sunday, nice to be paddling in salt water, nice to know that my family was safely at home not 10 minutes away.

Other planned or semi-planned events didn't come off quite so smoothly, in large part due to both the girls not feeling well. K has had a cold, which she's now nearly over, but L was hit hard and was coughing like she was tubercular. We had her checked for pneumonia and so far she doesn't have it, but we know 3 other children who do, and we were told to keep an eye on her. She's got a fever too.

So, we didn't do our traditional coffee-at-C&P. It's something we've done every year since K was born. They even comp me my coffee more often than not. But I've got a rain-check from M. And we didn't go anywhere besides to the grocery, and to pickup take out.

K, looking growed up
(6/19/2011)

Given that we were mostly laid low on Sunday, one of the treats the girls and I had was to snuggle together in our bed and watch The Princess and the Frog on my laptop.

I could say a lot about the movie, some of which I found very enjoyable, some of which was quite clever, and some of which struck me as especially stereotyped ("Ray" the firefly, as dentally-challenged Cajun, surely that raised some protests?). But the most significant thing for this particular post has to do with how K reacted.

If you've read older posts, you may remember that we've got a bad history with movies, the girls and me. We've tried several different "children's movies" that were too scary. This includes Little Red Riding Hood and Up. Possibly even the 3 Little Pigs (before K was in the musical version and got a better handle on what goes down - spoiler alert: in most of the versions these days, the wolf is chased away "and never comes back").

So I had my doubts.

Which were quickly realized when the two frogs (go watch the movie if you're already lost) are attacked by 'gators in the swamp. Both girls buried their faces in my shirt until I told them it was safe to look. And then, of course, another gator shows up to make a liar out of me. He ends up being a good, friendly gator, a misunderstood gator, but he's scary too, at least at first.

Somehow we got past this and moved onto several different voodoo/spirit scenes that were also scary (to K) and/or confusing (to K&L). I just said "they're like ghosts" and "he's a bad guy, but don't worry" and for some reason they were willing to stick with it. Maybe because there was the promise of a princess.

But what really undid K was when Ray (the firefly) dies. He gets stepped on by the bad voodoo guy, and slowly dies. Then there's a touching scene where everyone takes him back to the swamp and gives him a send-off on a leaf. His whole family is there, along with various other swamp critters, and they may even have a party afterwards. And his body floats off down the stream. And then, the mist clears, and high up in the sky, next to the evening star (which, I should add, Ray always believed was Angeline, the most beautiful firefly in the world and with whom he was in love), is a new star. Ray has joined Angeline! It's a touching moment. Apparently.

Because as we are watching, and a layer of dampness briefly crosses my eyeballs, I realize K is sobbing into my shirt, "Why did he die?" and "Where is he?" and "I don't want him to die" mumbled through her tears.

(L: He died becauth that mean guy thepped on him!)

I can't explain why I found this so touching, but I put my arms around K and held her and told her that he was now with Angeline. Which didn't really help because she didn't really get that part, and it didn't explain anything, but it was all I had for her. And eventually she was distracted again by the prince and the waitress (like I said, go watch the movie) open their restaurant and live happily ever after with the good gator playing saxophone in the jazz band at the restaurant....

Cryin' eyes
(a "selves-portrait," 6/19/2011)

Later, we went outside where M was gardening, K with her face still glistening, me with my shirt snot-damp, and she told her mama what had happened. M asked her about it and K said it was sad. But I think both she and L enjoyed the movie. I think.

It struck me that, plot-wise, it's pretty damn complicated for preschoolers. It's rated G, which I've learned doesn't mean squat. You can't count on anything these days! But it's G and there's no .... violence? nope, there's violence, sex? no sex, drugs? nope, no drugs, evil spirits? uh, there are evil sprits.... And there's death.

Which something of a recurring theme here lately. So, speaking of which, here's one more picture of our own extinguished "Ray" (though no one stepped on her). She's the one charging the photographer at the lower left:

"Chaos on the beach"
(1/31/2009)

definitions (special woosie wed. edition): ammonia / UPS

2011-06-22T20:03:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time, but double-definition tuesday is back. Sure, it's wednesday now, unless you're reading this next week, in which case it might be tuesday, or, if you're behind us on the international date line, maybe this was on time.

In any case, we've been ill, and, to use a phrase that is in vogue both at work and at home right now:

You Git What You Git and You Don't Throw a Fit!

So:

ammonia - noun, an illness that is apparently pretty bad, given that every kid in the proximity seems to be coming down with it.

usage:
me (walking into the house): Hello the house! How is everyone?
K (running into the living room): L has a temperature. If she's not careful she's going to get sick.
me: Sounds like she's already sick.
K (confused look)
me: If she has a temperature she's already got something.
K (all understanding now): Oh, yeah. But if she's not careful, she might get ammonia.
me: Really?
K (nodding): Yeah, Morgan has it and .... someone else too.
me: Ammonia? Wow. That sounds serious.
K (more nodding): Yeah. Read me a book Daddy!

UPS - noun, a device used as decoration, like a bracelet. Also sometimes for measuring distance/speed/etc.

usage:
L (holding up her arm with my Garmin on it): Dada! Dada!! Look. (big grin)
me: Hey. Where'd you find that?
L (grinning, then coughing): In your bag Dada! I found it in your paddling bag!!
me: Oh. I'm going to need that tonight, when I go paddling.
L: I know (more coughing - is it ammonia?). I just needed to wear it for a while.
me: You needed to?
L: Yeah. Here (taking it off her wrist). Read me a book Dada!!

... our weekend in a picture...

2011-06-19T20:43:00.000-07:00

... more or less:

June 19, 2011

It seems that all the kids around us have colds and/or pneumonia ("ammonia" to K).

So far, we're only as far at the colds, but they've hit hard, and now L has a cough that won't quit, so tomorrow I'm taking home duty and will be driving the shuttle to the clinic and back.

I actually had a very nice father's day (though I don't tend to go in for these kinds of holidays), about which I'll write more when I'm more rested. For now, I'll just say that it started with some stumptown coffee and a solo paddle. And I'm heading to bed.

... good morning, good morning....

2011-06-16T06:19:00.000-07:00

Monday morning it was my turn to get the girls ready for daycare and drop them off. Full disclosure: I rarely have to do this. I rarely have to pick them up either. M takes the brunt of the impact on this front, which I very aware of and alternately feel guilty about and grateful for.

Sometime in May

But Monday M went in early, so I stepped in.

Which means I got up early to try and get ready before they were in the way. And once they woke up I spent a lot of time trying to get them to eat, trying to convince them to get dressed, telling them that they CANNOT play with horses/baby dolls/books because we need to get out the door by 8.15a. All while getting ready myself.

How this goes depends on how well everyone slept, what they're feeling like, what they've got that might distract them. This morning there were horses (as usual) and oatmeal (which they sometimes eat and sometimes reject) and toast and showers and....

K didn't want to eat. L ate some oatmeal. I made a piece of toast ("Do either of you want some toast? K? L?" "I'm Black Beauty, Dada!!" "Toast! Do you want toast Black Beauty?" "You're P.J.!!"). I started to eat my toast. L wanted toast. I made her a piece of toast ("K, do you want some toast? K?! K!?!!" "No! I said no!!"). I gave L her piece of toast and started eating the second piece I'd put in, figuring K would want some. K decided she wanted some. ("You're kidding, right?" "No, I'm hungry.") I made another piece of toast ("L, do you want more toast?" "No Dada, I'm Black Beauty!" "Black Beauty, do you want more toast? More oat-toast? More horse-toast?" "Um.... no thank you!") and gave it to K who ate about 1/2 of it.

I decided I needed to take my shower, whether or not they'd eaten/dressed/were ready to go. So I went upstairs and undressed and got in and was shampooing up and K appeared, still in her jammies.

K: Can I get in Daddy?
me: Huh?
K: Can I get into the shower?
me (are you kidding me?!?): Uh, no K.
K: Why not?
me (yeah, why not?): Ok, sure. (opening the door for her to come in).

She came in and stood in her pajamas in the spray of the shower.

L caught wind of what was going on and she joined us. What's another soggy girl when you've already got one?

So there we were, me trying to actually wash, K&L trying to avoid doing all the things they ought to have been doing. And I turned off the water when I was done, and L got cold and we stripped her and dried her and I sent her to pick out some clothes. K next. And then I was able to dry and get dressed myself.

And you know what, it was the twist they needed to go ahead and get dressed.

It didn't make any sense, but it was somehow the right thing to do. I ended up with some soggy jammies, but I also ended up with 2 dressed-and-ready-to-go girls. And I managed to drop them off and I made the 9.15a water taxi.

Daddy Lesson: Flexibility is king. You have to be willing to shower outside the box!

... we all scream ...

2011-06-10T17:12:00.000-07:00

... for milk shakes!!!

2006, 2 days before K was born

It's mighty quiet around the house these days, which, if you'd been anywhere near the house recently, you might find hard to believe. But the chaos of the girls isn't quite the same when not overlaid with the chaos of the beast. It's hard to not hear her barking at the mail... or the neighbors... or us.....

But one of the things about being parents of young children is, you get limited time to wallow. Which probably isn't a bad thing. So life continues on. Specifically it goes on at Luna Park Cafe, West Seattle:

Choices choices choices....

M and I had a lunch date with K, the center piece of which was her first-ever milk shake (chocolate):

First Taste - Chocolate Milk Shake

All this to celebrate K completing the 2nd year of preschool. Next year she's officially a kindergartener!

And one last picture:

This one of me
(taken by K)

... school's in ...

2011-06-09T06:20:00.000-07:00

or, Of Dogs and Dying in Our Family

K and Lucy, Sept. 2007

Having children is a continual education. Which is the way I'd want it. When I imagine reaching a point where I have no interest in learning, it seems close to death. I hope my girls keep teaching me things. Which is a less-than-smooth introduction to today's topic: Death.

Death is one of those biggie topics.

It's hard for adults to handle, so it's no surprise that it would be difficult for children. Over the last 24 hours it's been interesting to help the girls try to take in the fact that Lucy is gone.

My biggest problem is not knowing what the girls are capable of comprehending, what they can take in and make (some sort of) sense of, and what just flows on past. Which in turn makes it a challenge to be understanding/supportive.

I'm fairly certain that Lucy's dying is impacting K. She was a mess yesterday, though not in any way that was easy to directly link to Lucy not being around. M and I suspect she's processing the challenging fact that part of her (seemingly unchanging) world has now permanently shifted. Kids imagine that things as they are, are things as they've always been. 3 years seems like forever, and their limited experience tells them that Mommy and Daddy have always lived right here in this house, and have always been married.... Even with the details of parents as children themselves, there's this sense that the world is fixed.

When M asked K how she was feeling, she said that every time she sees someone with a dog she gets embarrassed. M asked if she really meant embarrassed, and K wanted to know what embarrassed meant. When M included the notion that it can mean feeling shy about something, K latched onto that, saying "Well, I'm shy, so that works." I'm thinking she meant something slightly different.

L, on the other hand, seems to be experimenting with this notion of death, trying it on, turning it over to see what it looks like, but in a way that suggests it hasn't really sunk in. And she's only 3, after all, so that's probably as it should be. Yesterday morning when we told the girls that Lucy had died the night before, they had a few questions, and then when we were distributing vitamins, L said "This is my medicine. Pretend this is my medicine and I need to take it so I don't die." Ok.

K had lots of questions yesterday afternoon, questions about what Lucy looked like, what happened to her afterward, where her body went, etc. This is where my lack of understanding of child psychology probably does her a disservice. I tend to answer factually, without going into too much detail. Is this what she wants/needs? Is it appropriate? I don't know. But luckily children are pretty resilient. Hopefully I won't screw them up too much!

May, 2005.

2011-06-08T20:17:00.001-07:00

This evening I'm remembering Lucy, the "beast" in the title of this blog.

March, 2005

She was with us for 9 and 1/2 years, and the bedroom was awfully quiet last night without her snoring and shifting. We'll miss her.

.... we are riding, on an outrigger...

2011-06-06T19:37:00.000-07:00

(one of the many "catch up" posts I ought to be posting. not sure how many will actually make it up here, but here's one, at least.)

A couple of weeks ago, K paddled in her first outrigger race.

I'll pause a moment to let that sink in, because obviously everyone reading this blog understands the monumental significance of that sentence.

(pause)

This accomplishment was, as you may well imagine, fraught with... all kine stress and thrill and excitement.

I've been talking up paddling since shortly after I started, and the girls, being nice, pre-teen children, have taken the bait and talk excitedly about it themselves. Not that this means they understand anything at all about what is involved. But at least I get the lip service. For now.

A couple fellow paddlers with young children decided this year to make an effort to have a keiki (children) team for at least one of our sprint regattas. We tossed our hate into the ring too. K said she wanted to paddle. L would have loved to paddle as well, but at 3yo, she's a bit under the cutoff of 5yo.

There's something extra special about watching little kids paddling these 400 pound canoes. there are 5 children, and 1 adult (who steers), and depending on the experience and amount of practice and size of the teams, the steersman/woman does much of the real work. The races are 500 yards (meters?) and involve a turn around a buoy after 250. And turning an outrigger is very difficult if you don't have much speed going into the turn. And these canoes frequently don't have much speed.

But we were going to do it, and so, a week before the race, it was time for a practice. K was excited all week long, but on Saturday morning she collapsed in tears. She didn't want to paddle. She hated paddling. She was never, ever, going to paddle in her life ever again.

This was, to say the least, a bit inconvenient, given that 4 other kids and our steerswoman were going to be expecting her at the beach. M and I tried to talk to her, tried to explain that when you commit to something, you need to follow through, especially when there are others counting on you. She wasn't buying it.

So I told L that she could paddle, and we started to get her dressed for the rigorous 15 minute workout. I wasn't sure what would happen, given that she was technically too young to race, but we'd cross that body of water when we came to it. L was enthusiastic and hurried to dress in time for me to get her to the practice.

Which spurred K to change her mind. Which caused some complicated feelings on my part, given that I'd told L she could paddle instead. We ended up going, as a family to the practice, and while K sat in the official boat, L come with M and me and a couple other parents in a second canoe, paddling alongside the one which was "working out" (and I use that term loosely).

All of which is intro to these:

Getting ready to shove off.
I'm about to give K (who is sitting in seat 5,
immediately ahead of our steerswoman-extraordinaire)
the somewhat non-traditional pre-race kiss.

At the start! K is the smallest of the small,
on the far right in the closest canoe.

And under way, though you wouldn't necessarily know this,
given the amount of bow wave each canoe has....

And it was good.

Most importantly, the children all had a blast. K was nervous, but she showed up and get into the canoe and paddled like she knew how. We'd practiced the day before, sitting on stools in the living room, holding onto kitchen serving spoons, practiced changing from side to side, practiced keeping in time with the paddle ahead, practiced the motions just so everyone would be more comfortable with it.

Our canoe finished dead last, but that didn't matter. All the paddlers enjoyed themselves, and almost as important, L understood that she wasn't going to get to go this time, and there was no real fuss about it (I hadn't been sure how that would go).

K says she wants to do it again, and L wants to try as soon as she is old enough. All in all, a success at Green Lake!

* here's the thing about K and her pre-practice meltdown. I can understand where that comes from. She's like me, unfortunately, and doesn't like to do things unless she knows she knows how to do them. Which is a hell of a roadblock to throw into your path. She was nervous, scared, and felt she didn't know how to paddle so didn't want to make any mistakes. I can identify, and commiserate.

Luckily, our steerswoman completely understood (she's a mother, after all, and a very empathetic person). The practice was low-key and mostly just a familiarization of being in the canoe. They did things like look at the Space Needle, and paddle over toward a family of Canadian geese that made the mistake of crossing paths with a canoe full of kids. In short, the focus was on having a positive experience, and that carried over to the race itself, where it was about the experience rather than winning/losing.

... it's been a long time coming....

2011-05-31T22:35:00.000-07:00

... so, where have you been? Not busting down the door of my in box asking why there were no new posts on this blog, that's for sure. But you're busy, I know, I get it. So it's ok.

And where have I been? Uh... busy? Apparently there are times when I'm too busy picking up the pieces of abandoned toys to write about picking up the pieces.

We've actually had a lot of stuff happen that, in the moment, seemed like perfect blogging material:

a trip to Maui to visit my mother, sister and nephew (which started with an emergency appointment to the doctor on the morning of our flight because L, who'd been fighting a cold for 2 weeks, suddenly mentioned that her ear was bothering her -hmm... ear infection, 0-30,000-0 feet in just over 5 hours? better get thee to the physician!)
K's first outrigger race
a "date day" courtesy of M's brother and sister-in-law and nephews during which M and I got to try and talk to one another.

This went fine, after the initial panic about what we might find to talk about. We did yard work together (ah, how romantic!) and walked to the Junction to eat at Easy Street Records (your local record store doesn't serve brunch? you don't have a local record store? tally one for West Seattle!), we did a dog walk, we ate brie and drank champagne...

But none of this has made it further than partially written posts in my brain, which means I'll likely lose them before you ever see them.

Which is all a long and rambling introduction to this, a fully compostable blog post, made from a recycled message I sent M earlier this morning.

I was in charge of getting the girls off to school/daycare, and if that doesn't deserve a post, I'm not sure what does. By the way, I had to do this because M went into work early because we're going to a baseball game, just the 2 of us, as an anniversary present from our neighbors. How cool is that? (Oh shit, now what am I going to talk to M about?!?)

email:

Hey my love,

got the girls off this morning. K was the mom, L was the sister, and I was the brother (and our older sister was already at school - I think that might have been you, but I didn't press for details). As long as I played along, things went fairly smoothly. "Playing along" meant stuff like saying "Sister, do you want more pineapple before I got upstairs to take a shower?" and "Mother, could you come up and change for 'work' while I'm in the shower?" and "Mother and sister, I'm going up to take a shower."

Then I went upstairs to take a shower. And mid-way through, post-shampoo but pre-soap, there were tears being had by my sister (L), for ~~no discernible reason~~ because water had spilled on her dress. (The water was visible, barely, if I turned examined the dress at the proper angle in the light.) With the shower running I tried to convince my 'sister' that the water would dry, while simultaneously trying to convince my 'mother' that she needed to get dressed for 'work.' And I kept stumbling on the sister/daughter thing until I found myself asking K "are you still the mother?" just like L sometimes will ask "K are you still a horse?" as a way to determine if a game has ended or not, and when she said "no" I became the dad again.

L was in the midst of tearing off her dress ("I'm can't wear this any more!!!"), K was busy stalling to avoid getting dressed for school, and I was half-washed. I told L we could find another dress, told K to get dressed, and rinsed.

By the time I got out of the shower, L had found an alternate dress - she wanted to wear K's flower dress (the one you bought at Old Navy on Maui I think) but K said "no" so there were more tears and an inconsolable L until I suggested we use the hair dryer on her "wet" dress. ("Will it dwy?" "Yup, it'll dry." "Oh, ok!") And it was ok. At least for a moment.

All there was left was to prod K to dress. The jeans didn't work for her. (Thank you for pulling out the backup pair!) Then next door to drop K, and I kept thinking about being more neighborly and I'm holding L and listening to a description about car trouble, wishing I could go back and get my coffee and finally I kissed K and I retreated with L and in the bathroom I pointed the hair dryer at her while she covered her ears and she giggled as it blew warm air and waved her hair and she asked me to turn it off and everything was fine with her dress once more and then I got the dogs outside to pee (w/ L's help: "She not going to pee.... she going to pee!!! She not peeing!!!!! She peeing!! Dada, Cay-thee peeing!!!!") and back inside and somehow got L into the car with her stwawbewy Os and we had a nice drive down to Miss R's with L making loud chewing sounds ("Lithen to thith twemendouth loud cwunch!" "Wow, tremendous." "Now lithen to this one!!"). And I was fine because I'd already decided I wasn't going to make the 8.45 boat. And I didn't. So I stood down at the dock and read my book until 9.15.

And I hope you have a grand day. I'm looking forward to spending the evening in your company.

xxox
p

... it's an ... earache, nothing but an earache...

2011-05-07T23:53:00.000-07:00

So, I”m running behind due to… well, due to life. And a bad internet connection. which is to say, it’s not my fault. So this is going to be slap-dash, without the benefit of cool photos or graphics to distract from the slap-dashedness. Bummer.

To recap our first day:

4.45a - Wake up at home after being woken a couple of times during the night. K had to go to the bathroom. She “had a scary dream.” She… who remembers now.

5.30a - M and L come downstairs. L has woken up and is complaining about her ear hurting. She’s been dealing with a running nose for over a week now, and we’d tossed the notion of a quick doctor’s visit, just to make sure all was well. But decided it wasn’t necessary. Her cough was getting better, and her nose running less. So now it’s about 4 hours from take off, and she might have an ear infection.

7.30a - scramble to try and get an appointment. All hope of a semi-crazed morning, with us leaving the house at 8.30a are gone. Now it’s guaranteed to be a mega-crazed morning.

8a - everyone goes to the doctor’s office, where they squeeze us in to see… not a pediatrician (they don’t start until 8 and don’t have anything until 9) but a family practice doctor. Who squeezes us in. L now says her ear doesn’t hurt any longer, but we figure it’s worth the check.

8.20a - she’s got an ear infection. It’s early on, and not too bad yet, but definitely infected. The doc emails in a prescription to Bartell and we drive over, only to find that the pharmacy doesn’t open until 9a. It’s on to the airport.

8.50a-9.50a - park the car/shuttle to the airport/navigate the “ekskalators”/check in/navigate the security check/make the long walk to the bathroom/continue walking to the bagel shop/continue walking to the gate/wait while M gets coffee/another walk to the bathroom/and onto the plane.

10.30a-1.20p (PDT-HST) - we fly. too much and not enough to mention. except 4 (5?) trips to the tiny airplane bathroom w/ K. Where she pees and then I do. All within a space about 10 sq feet big.

We get to Maui and are greeted by Mom and Kim who have leis for the girls and M, rent our car (a Grand Marquis, which makes me feel like a hit man for some splinter mafia family), go shopping, get L’s prescription, drive to our condo and find it… adequate. Nothing to write a blog posting home about. Except the 2 cockroaches (one alive, the other dead).

It’s windy with rain squalls blowing in, and that means K&L&I went down to the beach for a dip. Which also means M and Kim join us, them standing in the rain and wind while the girls and I splashed in the waves and wind.

Walk to Mom’s house where K is so tired she doen’t go inside. M and she come back to the condo and go immediately to bed (about 5.30p HI time). Kim and L and I stay on another 30 minutes or so, then headed back (L nearly asleep in my arms). K’s out cold. L doesn’t take long. M and I are asleep by 7.30p.

That night we had wind and rain and about 2a L fell out of bed and was up for an hour and a half. I lay with K while M tried to get L to sleep. I could hear them talking, hear L insisting that she wanted some juice, hear L saying if she wasn't going to get any she "hated" everything. L fell asleep about 3.30, just before K woke up “starving.” I gave her 2 bowls of goldfish and then managed to coax her into lying quietly until around 4.15, at which point I swapped w/ M (K was insisting she wanted her mother). Then L woke up and we were all awake.

Prepare copious amounts of coffee!

... framed, we've been framed...

2011-05-02T05:13:00.000-07:00

So, last Friday was the great release of horses/ponies/all things horse-related in our ~~house hold~~ ranch. But in order to appreciate the full extent of the significance of this event, you need some background. Which takes us back another week, to Friday, 22 April, 2011.

An entry for the Things that Instill Fear list:

"Mommy, you should see what we're doing to the living room wall!!!"

An associated entry for the Things that Instill Terror addendum:

"We locked you out! We locked you out of the house!!!" (laughter)

Not-quite contrite co-conspirators

(wearing new guard-protector/rash-screen
shirts for upcoming trip)

Friday was looking beautiful, warming up to something like a balmy 60 degrees, making everyone in the greater Puget Sound region wonder where they'd put their shorts, bikini tops, sunscreen back in September when we last saw the sun. After a busy day at work, I hopped the water taxi for a sunny, sparkling-water ride across Elliott Bay to West Seattle, where my family would be waiting for me, excited by the prospect of a fun-filled, egg-filled, party-filled weekend. And better yet, the forecast for Saturday was sunshine and mid-60s temperatures. It could hardly get better than this (especially as we had 15 children from K's class coming over for an egghunt to celebrate her birthday).

I used the 10 minute boat ride to wind down from the day, then swung by the store to do a bit of last minute shopping for our parties. Then it was home, where things were bound to be sunny and full of anticipation and excitement.

As I pulled up in front of the house, I saw M stomping up the steps to the porch, and the girls' heads looking out the window. I climbed out of the car and waved: "Hello the house!"

What I got back was a cursory wave and a rattling of the doorknob. "You let me in, right now!"

I busied myself with unloading the groceries, and by the time I had carried them around to the kitchen door at the back of the house, M had successfully regained access and was having words with the girls. She came into the kitchen, arms crossed.

M: I can't believe.... they just.... Oh, I'm so upset!
me: Huh?
M: They drew all over the wall!
me: Huh?
M: Go look.

I went and I looked. The girls were sitting on the stairs where they'd been banished, laughing and poking each other. The wall behind the couch was a canvas of... scribbles.

Over the next few minutes were spent alternately insisting the girls sit back down (still full of giggles) and scolding them on their behavior. I was most bothered by the fact that they'd locked M out of the house. I figured it was potentially dangerous, if something had happened to them. She was most bothered by the writing on the wall. She figured being locked out was a way to have some quiet watering time.

So, what punishment? There were any number of things we could have chosen, from no lipstick, to no videos (which would have been as much a punishment for us, to be honest). What we chose were no horses. None. For a week. Which, given that we *knew* there would be horse and horse-related gifts over the weekend, was perhaps not the best option.

Still, we delivered the news to the squirming, laughing girls, who said "ok" and didn't seem to register the impact beyond that. In fact, they simply didn't seem to acknowledge the significance of what they'd done, which is the A-1 guaranteed way to get your parents' goat. Our goat. M and my goat. It was got.

We were strict all that afternoon (a beautiful, sunny one, by the way) and strict all that evening, and then we wrangled the girls into bed. At which point K wanted her soft pony to snuggle with, and we said no, and there were tears and much wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was finally sinking in that she'd done something (what was it again?) that resulted in suffering. L, not so much. I think she was asleep before K even started to cry.

We weren't thrilled about it, but we felt we had to stand strong, so we told her we understood her being sad, but that it was her punishment, and that was that. She quieted down after 5 or 10 minutes.

Here's the thing. My feeling: drawing on the wall... isn't cool, but the locking us out bit is worse. What if something had happened? What if we needed to get in quickly? We've got a key hidden outside, but it would take time to retrieve. M said to me later that she remembered "outlining" flowers on her mother's wall paper, while their house was on the market. She said she felt she was going a subtle job of it, drawing around the edges of the flowers. Apparently her mother didn't appreciate the effort quite as much.

And that was the start of the birthday/Easter weekend!

... it's a new day...

2011-05-01T20:33:00.000-07:00

... and I'm lots and lots behind. In the last week we've had a number of events worth mentioning. Like a birthday. And Easter. And 2 (two!!) sunny weekends (separated by rainy weeks, but still). But the thing most worth mentioning is the "loosing of the herds," which took place last Friday and which meant that, after a full week in "time out," the horses of the household were set free of their stalls and stables, to be played with again with a vengeance by little girls who had missed them.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. And rather than rush it tonight, I'll leave you with these photos of what happens in Seattle when it gets sunny and, more importantly, warm, after a long long winter:

K: Daddy, can I drink from the hose?
me: Uh, sure.

L: I want to dwink from the hoth!
M: Ok.

... colors in the sun...

2011-04-20T05:01:00.000-07:00

It's spring break for K, which means lots of time for getting into trouble.

To illustrate, a snippet of phone conversation between M and me on Monday:

M: You should see your daughters.

me ("your daughters" - oh oh...): Why? What's up?

M: They're in the bathroom with the door closed, putting on "makeup."

me (hearing happy? squealing in the background): Makeup?

M: Marker.

me: Marker?!? On their faces?

M: Yup.

me: Uh... how does it look?

M: Pretty orange.

me: Permanent marker?

M: I think it's the washable marker.

me ("think?"): Hmm....ok....

Later that same day....

(by the next morning they just looked "self-tanned")

What I admire (and envy) is how M handled the situation. No freakout, no yelling. She sounded (relatively) calm the entire conversation. I mean, they've already marked themselves up, so why get worked up, right? And they're the ones who'll have to deal with the repercussions....

Another great lesson from M!

... talking in the dark...

2011-04-15T19:07:00.000-07:00

"Lengthening" exercises

(WA coast, January 2011)

A direct transcript from an actual "conversation" last week:

me (walking into the house): Hello the house!

M (from the kitchen): Hi...

L (also from the kitchen): Daaaaaddddddyyy!

me (putting down my things): How is everyone?

L (hurrying to the kitchen door where she stands in shirt and corduroy pants that have been too long for her): Daddy! Look at how much these pants weigh!!

me (after a moment's hesitation): Hey! They fit you now. You're getting taller and taller!

... i read about it in a book...

2011-04-07T05:14:00.000-07:00

a conversation from our dinner table:

K: What does 'companion" mean?

me: It's the people you have around you. The people and other animals you have with you.

K: With me?

me: Like your stuffed animals. They're your companions. They keep you company.

L: Like... my dolly?

me: Yes! Your dolly.

K: And my dolly?

me: Yup!

L: And my... nose-y?

me: No, not your nose

L (giggling): Or my pootypooty

me: No. (turning to K) We can look up words if we don't know them.

K: 'Look up words?'

me: Yeah, in a dictionary. (turning to the bookshelf above the table) I used to have... It's a book... a book... you look up words...

K: If they're not on the computer? Look them up?

me (laughing with M): Uh, yeah, you can look words up on the computer. But dictionaries were from before computers.

K: You have a dictionary?

me (possibly indignant): Yeah! I have a lot of dictionaries!!

definitions (special "jugular" edition): blood / bleed

2011-04-05T05:17:00.000-07:00

Just when you thought you'd never see another in your lifetime, it's once again double-definition tuesday!

blood - verb, to lose bleed from a wound. Usually involves excited exclamations and an insistence on getting a Barbie bandaid

usage:
me (walking into the house after work): Hello the house!
K (sitting on the couch): Hi Daddy.
me: How was school.
K: Ok. Will you read me a book?
L (from the kitchen): Daddy!! Come thee!!!
me: Ok L. Let me take off my shoes. K, I'll read you a book. Let me check on your sister first.
K: She has a blister.
me: Oh yeah? (walking into the kitchen) Hi L.
L (sitting on the floor and trying to get a good look at her heel): Daddy! I'm blooding!! My thplinter is blooding!!! I need a bandaid!!! We have new bandaids and I need one!!!!
me: Ok, ok, let's have a look....

bleed - noun, the substance you lose when you have a wound that is blooding.

usage:
me (bending down to get a good look at L's heel): Oh yeah. Let me get you a bandaid.
L: Yeah, becauth I don't want to get bleed on my dreth!
me: No, you don't. No one wants that.
L: Yeah, no one wanth that!! Daddy, can you read to me?

.. pay you back with interest...

2011-04-04T06:58:00.000-07:00

It's "interesting" being a parent. Always interesting.

We get the opportunity to watch our children learn and, even more "interesting," we get the opportunity to learn ourselves. Often the things we get a chance to learn are things we either thought we'd learned earlier, or should have learned earlier. I find myself regularly learning things that I've already learned. As I said, "interesting!"

One lesson I regularly relearning is the importance of flexibility.

This is a biggie for me, probably because I'm not inherently flexible. I wish I was. It's one of the personality(?) traits I find myself wishing for. Some people seem able to adjust to shifting circumstances without a hesitation or a hitch. They just sidestep slightly, twist a bit, roll with the punches, and somehow reorient for the new realities. Me, I tend to remain planted with my expectations, even though these are often now irrelevant given the revised situation.

All of which is pretty vague and general, so you may have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. Here's an example, from this morning:

The alarm goes off at 6a. M is going to go running. But instead, she hops out of bed, turns off the alarm and comes back under the covers. I'm drifting in and out of consciousness, but I know she's gathering herself to actually get up. L helps her by waking up a couple of minutes later and calling for her. M gets up, brings L back, and tucks her in beside me, saying "I'm going running. You snuggle with your dad."

L and I lie there for about 10 minutes before she says "Dada, I want to go downstairs." I say, "Ok" since my plan is to get up anyway and make oatmeal so I can get out of the house by 8a. She says "Thank you Daddy." (!) And we make our way downstairs with the beast.

We're dog-sitting at the moment, so there's an auxilary dog in the kitchen. L wants to take off her diaper. We go down to the basement to get some underwear. Then back up to the kitchen, where L decides she wants tights too. Back down to the basement, dig through clean clothes - no tights - dig through dirty clothes until we find the pair she wants. Back upstairs to the kitchen where I find that one of the dogs has thrown up and due to the slope of our 100yo floors, things have ...drifted... out of sight beneath the "frigerator."

The next 20 minutes are spent with old towels, papertowels and, after moving the refrigerator, the vacuum. I was going to need to vacuum behind there anyway. And we found some magnets that had ended up under the fridge. (L: "I did that, Dada. I pologize." me: "That's ok L. We shouldn't put them under there." L: "I know Dada.")

Dogs are milling, oatmeal isn't started yet, L still needs her tights put on. I start to put on her tights (an aside - I never understood the whole gathering up the leg to the foot, then sliding your leg inside until I had to learn to put tights on the girls. Now I get it. I think of... maybe Mrs. Robinson*... every time I do it, and I get the necessity now.) and I hear K now, waking up in her bed. We finish with the tights, head on upstairs, gather K too, and after various morning chores, we head back downstairs where dogs are still milling, the refrigerator is still pulled away from the wall, and the vacuum is still in the middle of the floor. I'm finishing up as M walks in from her run.

I look at her: "One of the dogs threw up, I think Lucy. So I haven't gotten anything done. No oatmeal made, no lunch for K, nothing."

L: "It went under the fridgerator and there were magnets and it was really dirty!"

K: "I just got up."

M: "Wow...."

So I'm flustered, and haven't made or eaten anything, and next, K decides she's going to be a horse. Which means that everything we do/say needs to be directed at her as though she's a horse. No, "What do you want to eat?" It has to be "What horse food do you want to eat in your stall?"

It's not a big deal, right? But it's just one more layer of complication on a Monday morning that already feels somewhat more complicated than I'd planned. The simple solution is to play along, to be her "owner" and nudge her to come upstairs and get her "horse blanket" on so she can go to "horse school." And often I'm able to do this. But there are moments at which I balk. I just want to be able to say "You're a kid. Go get dressed!"

Which is entirely counter-productive. It's absolutely the worst thing I can do/say.

Having M there helps. A lot. She sweetly asks K what horse food she wants in her new thermos, and K tells her. Things move smoothly, whether we're horses, horse owners, children or parents. And I'm reminded that being able to go with the flow is key to keeping the flow moving.

All of which is a long intro to what I'm thinking about this morning, which is that I know none of us is perfect, or perfectly balanced, but I think I got lucky with my mom.

Mom, Honolulu, 10/24/31

I think she's done a great job of being a mom over the years, and as I get deeper into this parenting stuff, I realize more and more what she and Dad had to do and managed to do, and my appreciation grows. And as it's her birthday, I'd like to wish her a happy day, apologize for those mornings when I insisted on being... whatever it was I insisted on being (a cowboy? a dog?), and say:

Thank you Mom, for everything.

A couple of photos, to finish off with.

One of Mom with her parents:

Kaimuki, 1942

(mom, apb, nlb - note my grandfather, apb -

he was a boxer, and you can see it in his hands.)

And one of my sisters and me with Mom:

Haleakala snow! 1965

(me/mac/kpvz/klvz/mom)

... i got my eye on you...

2011-04-02T05:01:00.000-07:00

... or, learning isn't just for preschoolers any more.

Art project, at home

(2/2011)

Yesterday morning I was scheduled to go to K's school to do an "observation." M set it up, and confirmed the time by asking a neighbor to check when she was at the school. 8.55a.

Generally speaking, this sort of thing is not what I get excited about in the morning. There's the feeling out of place, a bull in a china shop (there's nothing like being a 6'5" man, trying to blend into the background at a preschool, small chairs, small desks, small people.... it doesn't work!), and last year it was pretty chaotic and I left without having a chance to say goodbye to K.

Add to this the fact that the last few nights I've slept poorly and have struggled in the mornings: L is waking up and wanting attention, the beast has been up as well, and K&L haven't been going to sleep easily. It all combines to wear a parent down and add to the challenge of morning.

Needless to say, I was not in the ideal frame of mind for "observing."

But it was what I was doing, so I drove K and our neighbor's boy to school and let them out, then parked and walked in. I got to stand in the drizzle and watch the kids playing at recess before class, and it was hard not to look across the playground and imagine that she was alone, not playing with anyone, ignored. I suspect I was projecting.... And then it was time to start the school day and I followed the children into their room. K looked damp and bedraggled, but then so did everyone else.

Her teacher had set up a table when K could show me the projects she's been working on:

a map we've heard a lot about at home, but with no details.
Us: What's it a map of?
K: I... I don't know! It's a map of places!
Us (trying to be helpful): Is it the United States?
K: There are different ... states I'm pinning out. They're ... states.
Us: Like your puzzle of the states with Alabama and Hawaii?
K (sharp shake of her head): No!
Us: Uh... ok....

It turns out it's a map of South America, and she's been "pinning" out countries and pasting them to the map. She's got Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia (maybe) done, and is working on Columbia...
her "workbook"

The workbook is a big deal. She was excited when she started it, but progress was slow because "it's boring" and "it's hard." I was curious to see it, and she showed it to me proudly, flipping quickly through the pages she'd done. Mostly it's small pictures under which are blanks for writing letters - a baby asleep, with "n" "a" "p" written under it, for example. And it gets progressively more difficult as you move along. The workbook has 80 pages, and K is now on page 26, which is good progress compared to how things were going earlier in the year when she was stalled on page 12 for weeks and weeks.

After this we talked briefly (about Romeo the goldfish whose gained quite a bit of weight in the year since I last saw him, and about the rearranged room) and then I had to leave to get to work, and K went back to the rest of the class. She waved goodbye and I waved to her, and I walked out of the building and through the rain to the car.

But here's the thing - once I was there, sitting in a chair (a big chair!), looking over these projects with K and sharing her pride and enthusiasm, it felt right to be there. I was glad I'd gone, and I didn't feel (quite as) crabby about the poor night's sleep and about the rank weather and about missing 3 hours of work. It was worth the effort.

K can be a challenge at home, teasing her sister, pushing limits, being almost 5yo. (Honestly, I can be a challenge at home, grousing and fussing and....) But spending one-on-one time with her in a setting where she has a chance to tell me what she's been doing and an opportunity to share her accomplishments helps me to remember just how truly sweet a little girl she is, and how she's trudling forward in life, doing all the things she needs to be doing to be a 5 year old (which is coming, this month!).

Oh yeah, as I was walking out of K's classroom, I happened to glance at a signup sheet. For observation times. And we were signed up for 9.45a. I'd been there an hour early, and K's teachers didn't even blink. They definitely get brownie points for that!

... give me down to there... hair!

2011-04-01T04:55:00.000-07:00

Here's what happens when "Dada" is left to deal with hairdressing needs:

(The beautiful thing about hair on the back of a head,

is, she can't see how bad it looks!)

And here's what happens when L is left do do Mama's hair:

An aside:

Who the hell is Paul Frank and why does he have his name on my daughter's underwear?!?

... shaking all over....

2011-03-30T21:11:00.000-07:00

... or, How I Learned to Miss Saddle Club!

Something momentous has happened at our house. When offered the chance between Saddle Club and another video, the girls chose door number 2. That "other video?" The Wiggles on Safari.

The Wiggles. I'd heard of 'em, but never seen them. M&L found this at the library and brought it home. And for some reason that eludes me, K&L love it. This particular one is set in the Australian Zoo, which is apparently run by Steve Irwin (or was), who makes a large number of guest appearances, along with his wife and daughter.

I watched it once with the girls, and I have to say, I don't quite "get" the Wiggles. Often it felt like I was watching a (bad) hybrid music video made by ex-members of the Village People and the Presidents of the United States. And don't get me wrong, I've got a couple PotUS albums, and wave my arms along with everyone else at the ballpark when YMCA plays, but this is *not* what I'd call great music coming out of Australia.

I can't shake the notion that these 40-somethings are guys who never quite made it in a band of their own. So they're left to (creepily) mimic playing guitars and sing songs for and to children. Simple songs. Really simple songs.

And yet, the girls seem to like it fine. I hear them laughing when someone jumps into the mud, or when the snakes scare the various Wiggles. IIt's not something I am going to need to watch again. And, luckily, it's a library copy, so it'll go back (it was supposed to go back last week, but oddly enough, no one else was waiting for it, so M and L renewed it for another week).

It's enough to make a guy miss his Saddle Club! Speaking of which, here are the girls, decorating "Prancer's" stall, otherwise known as our garden:

So they haven't given up entirely on horses. They're just branching out a bit.... I hope.

... another pleasant valley sunday...

2011-03-28T05:35:00.000-07:00

... or, "if I'm doing your nails, you're going to have to listen to the Monkees Greatest Hits with me.*"

Index finger, with too much polish

(see below for proper corrective measure)

Sunday morning M went to the gym.

Which normally is not worth noting in a blog post, but this time she went just as the girls were agitating for some new nail polish. I've never done nail polish before and in fact am not officially qualified to do. But as M was leaving she called back reassuringly to K&L that "Daddy will do your nail polish." And that was that.

This left the girls and me staring dumbly at each other, all trying to figure out how we'd gotten ourselves into this pickle, and wondering how we were going to get out of it.

After a bit of staring, there was nothing left for us to do but get to work. They got me the nail polish (St. Patrick's Day green) and I had L sit down on the window seat with her little fingers spread out on the kitchen table. I armed myself with a kleenex, and was unnerved when L chortled: "A kleenex?!? K, Daddy is using a kleenex!!!" I refused to let them know how clueless I was (what should I be using? a paper towel? a mop and bucket? a haz-mat suit?) and just plowed ahead, ignoring all doubts, at which point I realized I was going to need my reading glasses if I wanted to be able to see what the hell I was doing. They make little girl fingernails very small these days! Plus, we probably didn't have good lighting, due to living in the Pacific Northwest and all. I'm sure it was raining and gray and dreary....

After I got my glasses, I opened the polish and took a whiff, just to prime myself, and then we got down to business. And overall, it went... fine. In fact I discovered that I was much more of a perfectionist about it than the girls were.

L wanted both fingers and toes done. K only wanted fingers. The biggest problems we ran into were L's impatience with the drying process, and K's desire to wear my glasses. We had to redo several of L's fingers (and one toe), and in the process I learned that adding polish to polish doesn't always fix a problem (see photo above).

When M came home and found L in tears about .... something, I don't remember what because we were running at speeds of up to 3 breakdowns per quarter hour... she looked at L's index finger and said, "Let's take that off and redo it." One problem solved!

I did manage to get a couple of pictures to prove that there were moments of not-tears:

In fact, K was in a good mood the entire time. (She's still in that stage where she seems to believe I can do just about anything. Foolish her!) It was her sister who found reasons to doubt me and an endless variety of catastrophes about which to wail.

But I didn't take any pictures of that. Instead, I asked the girls to pose so I could document our successes:

*At some point, K asked if it was a girl or a boy singing, and I told her it was all men. She put up with a few more songs and then wanted me to change to some women singers, so we switched to ABBA, and danced our way through the rest of her fingernails.

... you keep me hanging on the telephone...

2011-03-23T21:37:00.000-07:00

It's been a long week or two, punctuated by the flu (M and me) and the flu or something similar (K) and just being 3 years old (L).

And this morning was particularly "challenging" with K who slept late and woke up as angry as a hungry bear in spring. I was heading out the door when the exciting stuff really started. So I've had home on my mind all day.

When I got out of a meeting this afternoon I had a message.

M: Hey, it's about 4.15 and I don't know if you're still at work, but if you are, give me a call. We're all fine, but we're going to need a new washer.

So I called of course, and asked about the washer, and it sounds like we're going to need a new washer. Ok. And while M was giving me the details, I got this:

L (picking up on the other line and yelling): Are you Daddy?!?

me: Hi L. Yeah, I'm Daddy.

L (laughing): Oh yeah, I forgot! (hangs up and runs over to M to tell her about the conversation)

M (overheard): Yeah, I heard. I was on this phone.

Which, combined with knowing everyone is fine, makes the sunshine this afternoon a little bit sunnier.

She looks so calm, doesn't she?

before the deluge...

2011-03-17T05:43:00.000-07:00

L, before the flood

Pretty peaceful, huh? This is the scene that every parent dreams about, the sweet, sleeping child.

This is L sleeping on her mom (who is buried somewhere beneath her) on Monday afternoon. I snapped this (and the second photo on this page) just before running off to get K at school.

But you shouldn't necessarily judge this book by its cover.

This is actually a picture of sickness. The whole adult household was sick. L wasn't sick, she was just tired. M was sick. I was sick too, but not quite as sick as M, so her's trumped mine. I got the crud a day or so before her, and never got it quite as badly (maybe because I had my flu shot this winter?). But as of Sunday morning, we were both wanting to just crawl into bed and sleep, snorffle and toss. Not an option, not with kids. I even took the girls down to the beach on Saturday, walking carefully so as not to disturb my throbbing head too much. And come Monday I took K to school in the morning and picked her up that afternoon, and in the car on the way home I told her that we were going to go in through the kitchen because I'd left her mom and sister asleep in the living room.

But when we slipped in the back door, everyone was awake.

L comes dancing up to me with a big grin: Dada! Dada!! I peed in my pantsies!

me: You did? (I glance over at M, who's just come up from the basement. the basement, where our washing machine lives. she's shaking her head with a wry smile).

L (leading the way to the living room): Yeah! Come and thee the couth!!

K: What?

Later I learn from M that she woke up to the sudden feeling of dampness, realizes what is happening, and lifts L up and off her, onto the floor. L opens her eyes, looks up, and then goes straight back to sleep. M (she's really sick, remember) strips off the couch cushion covers and starts laundry. Probably the thing she most wanted to do right then. After changing her clothes. Later, L wanted to "thee my wet clotheth!"

But when I left, things were quiet, peaceful, nearly angelic:

They don't stay that way....

definition: teeter-saw

2011-03-15T04:34:00.000-07:00

after a long hiatus, it's once again, it's double-definition tuesday! only with a single definition. beggars can't be choosers.....

teeter-saw - noun, a playground device for two (or more) children to use to knock each other's teeth out.

usage:

K: Mom, look at that teeter-saw!
M: Wha...? Oh, yeah.

sisters, 1/22/11
(not a teeter-saw, but close enough....)

... (s)he's still a gorilla...

2011-03-10T04:46:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday I took a "vacation day" to stay home to with L while M went in to work.

L is now at a stage that requires a lot of attention. Not because she needs help doing much of anything (she's quite resourceful and willing to try just about anything necessary, whether it's going to the potty or getting some candy or cleaning up a spill. Except when she's not. No, she needs attention because she's constantly wanting to share things, to talk, to show us something.

We can be busy with cooking dinner, chopping onions or deboning chicken, and L will yell "Daddy! Daddy!!" like the living room rug has caught fire. "What L?" "I want to thow you thomthing!!!" And generally that "thomthing" is how her 2 inch horse Pranther can zump over a pillow.

It can be wearing, if you are trying to get anything done. If you're not, it can be quite entertaining. Until you're worn out.

A couple of sample conversations from my day at home:

me (calling into the living room from the kitchen, where I'm trying to clean up the breakfast dishes): Hey monkey, how're you doing?
L (yelling back from the living room): I'm not a monkey!!
me (moving toward the living room door): You're not?
L (still yelling, though I'm now standing about 10 feet from her): No! I'm not. A. Monkey!!!
me: What are you?
L (yelling, while lining up her horses): I'm a chimpanzee!!
me: ---

staring back at you
(2/21/11)

And then, later in the day:

L (lying on her stomach on the kitchen floor with the barn, trying hard to fit a large horse in a small stall): Dada, I need to figo-ate thith.
me: You need to 'figurate' it?
L: Yeah, because these hortheth need to be checked after the night time in case they aren't...aren't...aren't ready to go.
me (figuring it's only fair that I confuse her as much as she confuses me): Oh, that explains it. Figurate it.
L: Yup, yup. I need to figo-ate it.
me: ???

off topic: does it bother anyone else that Curious George, clearly a chimp, is described as a "monkey?"

... here we are now...

2011-03-08T04:55:00.000-08:00

... entertain us...

L, by K

(w/ L's cambra - late dec 2010/early 2011)

M & L are reading a book.

L: What'th thith Mama?

M: That's a dinosaur.

L: Doeth it thwim Mama?

M: Swim?

L: Yeah, can it thwim?

M: Some dinosaurs could swim, but they aren't around any more. They're extinct.

L: What?!

M: They're extinct.

L: What Mama?!?

M: They're extinct. They were alive a long time ago.

L: What?! What Mama?!!

M: The dinosaurs. They aren't around any more. They're extinct.

L: They thtinky? You thaid they thtink?!?

... if i needed you...

2011-03-05T22:53:00.000-08:00

bedtime conversation, saturday night, after a friday night of many wakings:

me (kissing K goodnight): Sleep tight love. Do you want me to get you some kleenex?
K: No, if I need some I can just call you.
me: But I might be asleep.
K: Then I can call Mama.
me: She might be asleep too.
K (as if it's obvious): Well then I can just call you.
me: Don't forget, we're all tired tonight. We need our sleep.
K: I will try not to wake up one time.

... bad luck streak...

2011-03-05T05:19:00.000-08:00

...in dancing school

K&L have been going to a ballet class at the local community center, where "going" = appearing every Monday in case the teacher, who seems to miss class more than not, happens to show up that week. M told me that it's pretty cute (when the teacher *does* come and class happens) because the girls spin around and run around and generally burn off energy in a quasi-organized way.

I've been meaning to go on a Monday, and this last one I made a point of getting into work early so I could be home in time to take them. Organizing for a 30 minute trip like this takes significant effort (something that won't surprise any stay-at-home parent). And to add to this, the weather is windy, with spitting icy rain at times. Which means that L isn't interested in wearing a coat and in fact wants to have short sleeves. (My inclination, especially when it's for a short exposure, is to just let her do what she wants.)

Anyway, we somehow manage to get out of the house and into the van. L has her baby. K has made her last-minute potty stop. I've got a couple of chocolate chip granola bars and water bottles for after class. And I'm strapping them into car seat/booster.

K: Actually, I want my baby.

me (seriously?!?): You want your baby?

K (nodding): Yeah.

me: L isn't taking hers in. She's leaving it in the car.

K: I know. I'll leave mine in the car.

me (sigh): Ok.

Dash back to the house, unlock the front door, navigate around the dog who either doesn't recognize me and thinks I'm an intruder, or doesn't remember the last time she saw me and is so thrilled I'm home again that she can't stop barking and jumping around, and grab K's dolly. I don't even bother to take off my shoes before crossing the living room!

We actually start to drive toward the community center. We're late, but not that late, and M has told me about a parking lot she uses that's close to the building. I drive down California and get into the turn lane, only to realize I can't get to the parking lot from here. My only option is a lot at the high school, not much farther away, but not what I was expecting.

me: Is this where Mama parks?

K&L: No!

me: Well, we'll have to park here today. Next time I'll go to that other lot.

K: That's where Mama parks. Over there.

L: Yeah, over thea!

me: I know. But I took the wrong road.

L: You took the wrong woad?

me: Yup. Ok, let's get out. L, you sure you don't want your coat?

L: I don't want it!

me: Ok. Come on girls. You have to hold my hand.

K (buffetted by the wind): Why do we have to hold your hand?

L (immediate goosebumps on her bare arms): Why hold your hand, Dada?

me: Because there are cars leaving the parking lot.

I get them over to the track that M tells me they like to run along. The wind is probably about 10-15 mph but feels like something you'd have to battle to get to the top of Everest. Or Rainier. Oddly, neither one of the girls has any interest in running along the track in this weather. I'll have to check with M about this.

We go into the building and hurry upstairs. I'm already a tiny bit stressed because 1) we're running late, 2) we're going to a dance class, 3) M has warned me to expect K to need to pee before and after class (at a minimum) and that means either taking her to the men's room, or letting her go into the women's room on her own, and neither option is particularly appealing to me, and 4) did I mention this was a dance class, moms and daughters, big guy feeling out of place....

At the top of the steps K announces that she needs to go potty.

me (I can see the open door of the women's room at the end of the short hallway): Ok. We'll wait here.

K: Daddy, can you stand next to the door?

me (moving with her toward the bathroom): Ok.

K: Daddy? Can you close the door?

me (looking at the door - it's got a flip-down door stop holding it open): Ok.

(I flip the stop up and the door closes. My oldest daughter is now on her own in a public restroom. In the interest of full disclosure, I have to add that this is a two-stall restroom, entirely empty except for her, in a back hallway of the community center, unlikely to be used by anyone else in the next 24-48 hours)

L and I wait, L wandering back and forth along the hall, interested in the water fountain, the open Men's room, the stairway, the open door to the dance class room....

K (through the door): Daddy!

me (also through the door): Yes K?

K: I need help!

me (nightmares coming true, pushing the door open slightly while waiting for some just-arriving woman to begin screaming "pervert" behind me): Yeah K?

K (in her closed stall): I need help ripping the paper.

me (!!! - pushing the stall door): You need to unlock the door if you want me to help you.

K (comes and unlocks the door, her tights down around her knees): Daddy?

me (ripping off a length of toilet paper): Yeah?

K: If I need to go to the bathroom again, can I?

me (backing away and out the bathroom): Of course. Are you almost finished?

She finishes up, then needs to wash her hands and isn't sure where the soap is. I end up helping her, now fully committed to a father-daughter experience in a public women's room. And at last we're on our way back toward the dance class.

As we walk in, K remarks that none of the other (3) girls "is the same ones" they've danced with before. "Uh huh," I mutter, pushing the girls ahead of me and wondering which of the women is the teacher.

K (loud whisper): It's not the same teacher!

me (distractedly): No?

K: No Daddy.

me: Well maybe the other one is sick.

We take our stuff to the stage, which is where stuff gets put and where parents sit during the class. And I try to sit down, but the girls are in full-blown "shy mode" and cling to my legs, pressing their faces into my jeans. I take stock of the class. There are 3 women and 3 other girls. Everyone is milling about, no one taking charge. Over the course of several suspiciously confused minutes it becomes clear that none of the women present is, in fact, the teacher. Everyone is wondering where the teacher is. We wait. We mill (or hide our faces). At least once another girl comes over to check K&L out, but they aren't particularly friendly or welcoming. I start to get more stressed, wishing the girls would open up a bit, be friendly, maybe mill about with the others. Then L tells me *she* has to go potty.

K insists that she does as well, though it's been all of... 10? minutes since she last did.

I take them out, and this time we go to the Men's room.

K: Why 'men's room' Daddy?

me: Because I'm not supposed to go into the other bathroom. And L isn't big enough to go by herself.

K: You not supposed to go into the anana bathroom?

me: No.

K: Why?

me: Well... because... everyone wants privacy. And women don't want men around when they are going to the bathroom. (it sounds somewhat hollow, given our more lackadaisical approach to pottying privacy when in-house, but it's what I can offer in the heat of the moment).

We're all now in the men's room, and this one has a single stall and a urinal. I've closed the door and locked it, just in case. I'm helping L off with her tights and lifting her up onto the toilet, wondering just how clean everything is. K touches and knocks off a toddler seat that was precariously balanced on the handicap rail (me: Don't touch that! Don't. Touch. Anything!!!) , and now L wants to use that. I sit her on it, she pees and finishes up, then it's K's turn and she wants to use the seat as well. And amazingly (to me), she pees significantly, just minutes after the last time. Next, it's hand washing - L wants to do the soap herself, but can't reach it. K wants to get a paper towel herself, but can't reach them.... I'm guessing my blood pressure is up above normal. I finally manage to herd them back out and into the dance room, where someone from the community center is now telling us that she's left messages for the teacher and she's usually punctual and and and....

She pulls out a boombox and the moms/daughters decide to free dance as long as they're here. I encourage the girls to join in, but they won't. The moms/daughters switch to follow-the-leader and again I encourage and the girls resist. I saw that if they're not going to do anything, we should just go home and have a dance party there. No movement. I say again that they should go join the follow-the-leader. K says "not unless you do too." My nightmare. But I get up and join the end of the line, hands under my arms, flapping my elbows like a chicken. I glance over and see the girls standing by the stage. L comes to join me, but wants to hold my hand, which inhibits my flapping ability some. It goes on like this a bit longer before we retire to the stage again. K is sitting there, watching the others with a smile on her face. I can tell she'd like to be a part of it, but she refuses to join in.

And here's the kicker. I get exactly where she's coming from. Sadly, I would be doing the exact same thing that she is, if I wasn't expected to set a better example for my daughters. I would sit and watch until I was certain of my place and certain of acceptance, and only then would I join in. K, I'm afraid you're genetically screwed.

Eventually we do leave the moms/daughters to their antics, and on the way out K needs to go to the bathroom again. L and I wait, but this time I don't bother to close the main door. There's no one else around, and she's got her stall door closed anyway. Once again she needs me to help with the paper, and once again I can't get into the stall because it's locked. After all this (and prayers that L doesn't get it into her head that she needs to go again), we head downstairs where I ask at the front desk about makeup sessions. I say that we don't even know how many sessions are left, given the illness of the teacher and the snowdays and.... The woman there tells me that this is the first day of a new session, that all the earlier missed days are supposed to have been credited back to people.

So, it turns out that we aren't even supposed to be here. It's a class we're not signed up for!

We retreat then, out the door to beat our way against the arctic wind, back toward the parking lot, where I plug the girls back into their seats and get into my own. I pause for a moment before starting the van, and K has something to say:

I don't even want to do dance class, ever again!

(I don't tell her, but I'm feeling much the same.)

pictures of ...

2011-03-04T04:38:00.000-08:00

... me, taken by L.

me, washington coast

(by L, w/ my cambra, 1/31/11)

I love seeing the girls take an interest in photography. K has had a camera since her 3rd birthday, and she used it a fair amount at first, but hasn't much lately. L on the other hand, was regularly "borrowing" it.

Now L has her own cambra. But she likes to use mine (though she hasn't mastered the art of looking through the viewfinder at whatever it is she's taking a picture of). In the above one, I moved into what I guessed was the frame (there are several "outtakes" from the same string of photos that show clearly how I'm mostly not in the pictures).

I took to photography early. I can still remember my first camera, a Brownie, and still have some pictures that I took with it. It used 110 (I think) roll film, which means that at 7yo I was mastering the challenge of threading a film leader into an empty spool.... Sometimes I impress myself! After that it was borrowing my dad's old asahi pentax (w/o built-in light meter) before graduating to my own pentax (w/ light meter). I took pictures all through junior high and high school, and a bit in college, though being away from home equaled having to pay for film/developing myself, so my output dropped off significantly. And then after college I was broke but still was taking pictures. Some of those rolls I only processed within the last 10 years, some 15 years after I took them. Now I'm mostly taking digital, though sometimes will still haul out the nikon 35mm or pentax 4.25....

None of this matters as much as the fun I have seeing my daughters taking pictures. Here are a couple of representative* shots:

Daddy, by K

(sometime in 2010?)

Daddy, by L

(late 2010/early 2011)

* by "representative" I mean in terms of composition, etc. The exhaustion and bleariness on my face are due entirely to the poor focal qualities of the cameras!

...mama tried...

2011-03-01T05:33:00.000-08:00

... to nap while L took pictures...

M, by L

(taken, apparently, during a "snatch-nap",

some time between early 12/10 and mid-2/11)

L got a "cambra" for her birthday this last December, and for a bit there was taking a lot of photos. I've now begun taking more pictures with it than she, but I don't get credit for this one.

... do you want to dance...

2011-02-28T04:55:00.000-08:00

... or something similar?

Here's a post I wrote a bit ago but failed to actually publish. So, you're getting more content this week, but some of it may be past its expiration date. See if you can tell which is which!

Lately the girls have been "going to dance class" and doing ballet in the kitchen. This involves K running and twirling and L chasing after her, spinning occasionally but mostly just running with little feet that thump across the floor like small pile drivers pounding some resisting post. (She is particularly good at standing on her toes, something she has over her older sister!) They've been pretty good at playing together, and more importantly, at playing together in ways that don't require parental intervention, playing this way for up to 10 minutes at a time, at which point usually L begins crying loudly, histrionically, reacting to something that K may or may not have done. And then M or I will go and see what's happening.

Yesterday, when I just wanted to sit and read the paper, the girls wanted a "dance instructor." M was already reading the paper, so she somehow escaped notice though she was sitting not 3 feet away from me. (It's a relationship moral quandary that doesn't support too much consideration -- do I point out to the girls that their mother is also available to act as dance teacher, thereby winning me a few short minutes of paper-reading time but costing me untold relationshipal brownie points, or do I just suck it up and make another espresso and teach them everything I know about dancing. Which should take about 15 seconds.

I chose the latter. And after that espresso I suggested they do an "envelope." *

K: What's an envelope?
L: What a enbelope Dada?
M (glancing up with a wry smile): (unspoken, but clearly stated: what the hell is an envelope?1?)
me: Here, I'll show you.
(I swallow the last of the espresso and consider how many more I can have, given that it's Sunday and I'd like to fall asleep tonight sometime before Tuesday. I stand upright, arms spread, then wave them around and bend at the waist, folding over so that my arms are now pointing somewhere toward my feet (though I'm not flexible enough to actually *touch* my feet!). Then, as gracefully as I am able, I straighten up, hoping my back doesn't go out, and finish with a flourish of hand/arm waving that approximates something I might have once seen in a production of the Nutcracker. Maybe.)
M (risking her camouflaged perch on the window seat): Wow. That's quite an envelope!
K: Yeah.
L: That quite a enbelope Dada.
K: But how we do that?
me: Come here, I'll show you. Point your toe out, put your arms out like this... (I walk her through it and she more or less gets it, though given her lack of practice and my superior experience, she's nowhere near as graceful as I am.)

This buys me a minute or two until they're ready for the next "practice thing."

Ah, Sunday morning....

* Why "envelope?" Uh... because I saw one on the counter? It's really none of your business!

... my analyst told me...

2011-02-26T21:43:00.000-08:00

... that i was right out of my head....

What is wrong with this picture:

Yesterday, pm, rain chains frozen solid:
Last night, sub-freezing temps
This morning, snow still on the ground (and rain chains still frozen)
Later this morning, unable to unlock the club OC2 to take it to the race because the padlock is frozen solid, we eventually buy a small BIC lighter to warm it up (and it works!)
2 hours later, rigging the boat, I can't get the front iako all the way into the hull because of something... what's in there? a chunk of ice we can't dislodge!
And then I'm walking around puddles with ice in them, carrying the boat into the Sound, to paddle in a 6mi race, water rising up and over the tops of my booties....

Nuts? Uh, yeah! But we had a good race and it was fun. And it was cold. The ice was still on the puddles in the parking lot when we left, and there was snow along the roads and ice even on a couple of tiny, small bays we drove by (that's salt water ice!). Yeah, nuts.

The thing is, I got to race with DougM and I really like paddling with him. The boat feels solid when I'm with him, and we manage to surf well. It was worth it. We came in third, behind a surf ski and another OC2, passing a third OC2 in the last mile due to Doug's surfing skills and our conditioning. I wore gloves and 3 shirts, plus an undershirt, plus my life jacket, plus 2 hats and booties, and I did not get too warm. The wind was coming from the south, and the race went south for 3 miles before turning back north. Which means we pushed into the wind/waves for the first half, then had them with us going home.

We averaged 6.6mph, with our average for the 2nd 3 miles 7mph each mile. Not too shabby. And interestingly, my heart rate average was 170+ over the course of the race (w/ a 178 max). My usual workout heart rate averages 160+. Not sure if this means I'm not really working, or if I was pushing extra hard today.

I did this race last year, and hulied. It was nice to do it again and with company. And to finish ahead of the pack. We even got home by 3.30p, in time for me to be the jump for the girls while they were horses, in time for us all to have dinner together, in time for M and me to watch a movie (The Fighter - good movie).

Here's our track.

I'm going to bed now.

... zebras are reactionary...

2011-02-26T04:55:00.000-08:00

To celebrate the birthdays of 2 of our country's presidents, we did the 2nd most patriotic thing (2nd only to shopping for unnecessary material items): We went to the zoo. And rode the carousel. And had a breakdown (L). And then we came home. With zoo maps.

"I need my glasses because I need to

rememberize

all the animals we saw."

(map reader, 2/21/11)

Happy birthday George, Abe. We rememberized you ....

... i like the way they walk...

2011-02-25T22:10:00.000-08:00

... girls!

This afternoon I spent some quality time with seven or eight of my closest half-dressed female pals (and two of my closest fully-dressed female relatives). Yes, we played Barbie, except when we were playing horses. And sometimes we played both at the same time!

In surfing you'd call this a "quiver," different boards for different conditions and breaks. I'm not sure what the proper phrase is in barbie-ing:

Not all the Barbies in the house

I picked up the girls from Ms. Ronda's this afternoon because M had to work. And the main challenges in the afternoon are: getting them to eat a proper snack, and stalling to avoid Saddle Club for as long as possible. In other words, this was serious!

In-van conversation, 2 minutes from home:

K: I'm starving!
me: We're almost home and we can have a snack.
K: What can we have?
me: How about apples and cheese?
K: We always have that. You always say 'apples and cheese.' Why do you always say that?
me: Because it's good for you. And it's good.
K: I don't like apples and cheese!
L: Because ith... ith... ith not like a dessert!
me: Right L, it's nutritious and helps your body stay strong!
L: Yeah! Ith nutrithouth.
K: I don't like apples and cheese!
me: Ok, we'll find something else. Like yogurt.

Against all odds and contrary to indications, I manage to tempt K into eating some apple and a bit of cheese. L and I finish the rest of it.

And then comes the "Can we watch a Saddle Club?" request. I say they can, but then ask what the suitcase of Barbies is doing in the middle of the kitchen floor. (These are dolls passed in our direction by a neighbor girl who's 8yo and has moved on to other things, which means most are missing at least one shoe, and their dresses are a bit worse for the wear, but it also means that we've yet to actually purchase a Barbie. A small victory, I like to believe.) We open the suitcase and L wants me to put a dress on the strange mermaid Barbie and we're somehow suddenly acting out scenes from Go Dog Go (which we've read many times and which we saw at the Childrens Theater just last week).

me ("walking" the mermaid Barbie up to the Snow White Barbie): Hello.
L (nodding): ---
me: You're supposed to say "hello"
L (nodding): ---
me: Do you like my hat?
L (shaking her head): No.
me: Good bye
L: Good bye.

In addition to the mermaid (onto which I never did manage to get the dress), there's this:

who is scary-freaky in her mardi gras (?) costume.

And since I had L's cambra out and was taking arty photos, I took this one:

I'm not sure why K felt she needed to close her eyes, but she did. If you look carefully you can see Prancer off to the left side, just clip-clopping into the frame.

I'm proud to say that we managed to entirely avoid Saddle Club, at a cost of ~1 hour of Barbie-ing and horsing around. Yes, I'm that good!

... sunny....

2011-02-25T04:56:00.000-08:00

... yesterday was dark and filled with... snow!

I'm posting these from last week, just to remind myself that it is sometimes decent around here in the winter, and also to note that even while it was so beautiful, I knewknewknew that it was going to get cold and nasty again.

And it has.

And I'm donedonedone with winter!

Three tables, w/ skyline

sunrise, w/ cross swells

... it runs in the family...

2011-02-24T04:42:00.000-08:00

... genius I mean...

Genius, captured

And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, here's another view, tightly cropped:

first time, unassisted

3y2mo, 2/18/11

We were sitting at the kitchen table, probably trying to read the paper while ignoring the loud "conversations" zinging around the space between our heads, when I looked up and realized that L had written her name, by herself, for the first time. We've been "dotting" out the letters recently (that's how they start in Montessori school, and she's watched K learn to write that way), but this was unassisted. And something of a shock.

Proud? Nah, just another flash of brilliance in our brightly lit lives.

I do wish I'd managed to grab the piece of paper before she covered it, but then again, that's just a parent trying to control what he cannot possibly control.

Note: You can find a memory refresher for a similarly bright flash here.

photo wednesday - ... and if i look back...

2011-02-23T05:25:00.000-08:00

...i'll remember... just a little bit of rain...

This is a picture I took in our living room, using L's birthday "cambra." She's opened up her birthday umbrella.

Just a little bit of rain

(L, 3yo, 12/2010)