Twinsfest '14

Today Ted took Joe with him to Twinsfest, the annual celebration of all things Twins baseball.  With the Metrodome being demolished the event was held at the ballpark. So while it was a brutally cold day, the boys got to go to the stadium. Joe even got his picture at two standard statues: Kirby Pucket and the big gold glove (no photo op line when its below zero!). You can see Joe trying to withstand the stiff arctic breeze while smiling.

Ted wondered how much space would be available to have this event within a baseball stadium and he was surprised to discover all the swank lounge and concession space they have for the prime seats behind homeplate. Clearly a ballgame is a very different experience for about 10% of the crowd. 

That said, they had a fun time.  Joe played some games and won trinkets and candy, got his face painted, and got a balloon animal. They also got to see the press box and the locker room and all the aforementioned lounges. Of course the highlight was seeing the mascots: Wanda, Skeeta, Babe, and Bullseye (Louie was resting his handler told us).

Hard Moment

Fans, it's so cold here that many school districts have again cancelled tomorrow's classes. Such was the case this past Thursday, as well, and how it came to be that Julie and Joe were headed to the library that afternoon. On the way there, Joe asked Julie who made the roads, which led to a discussion about the government and its various officials--mayors, governors, the President. Joe confirmed that the President of the Inited States is Barak Obama and that he is a boy. He then asked Julie if the President could be a boy or a girl. Julie said that the President could indeed be a boy or a girl. Her voice broke ever so slightly as it trailed off, as she refrained from telling Joe that although the President can be a girl, the President has never actually been a girl. He would have asked why--he would have--and what would she have said? What would she have said?  What could she have said that wouldn't have led to who know how many more questions with unsatisfying answers?  Those answers would have had to acknowledge that we live in a world that sometimes uses the uncertain and often easily made promise of possibility to excuse the more meaningful and often harder to realize substance of reality.  Hard answers.  Hard moment.

Canopies!

As our regular readers know, in recent months, the bambini have become taken with the Fancy Nancy books. Joe likes them because Nancy likes big and fancy words and he does, too. Nancy has put out a compendium (that's fancy for collection) of her favorite fancy words from A to Z. Her favorite word beginning with Y is yearn. Joe used it in a sentence right away: "I yearn for a DS." He thought he was hot stuff, Fans.

Clara likes the Fancy Nancy books because the stories and sentences are a little more involved, because the pictures are also more involved--always has liked fancy drawings, and because Nancy also likes to deck herself out all fancy like.

Nancy's whole world is fancy really. She's got a canopy over her bed. Sometimes, she stargazes and sleeps in a tent in her backyard. Canopies and tents are amazing when you are the ages of the bambini and Joe and Clara have been busy off and on trying to create them for themselves.

A few nights ago, Julie came upstairs to tuck herself into bed with her book, and found Clara still up. She said she was scared which is really a catch-all phrase these days that signals something is amiss in her world. In this case, she'd been trying to make a tent out of a blanket and it "all fall down." When she looked at Julie and said, "Can you help?" Julie said she would see what she could do.

That night, Julie made half a canopy with a yardstick, an unused closet hanging bar, and a baby blanket. It was the closet hanging bar that fit perfectly in the corner of the bed--and Birdie's soft delighted giggles--that set her to thinking about a better canopy.

So the next day, she stopped at Home Depot for dowel rods that were the same diameter. Turns out, they come in four foot lengths which was perfect; no cutting required! Target was having a January white sale, and so right dowel rods, two twin sheets, and some blue painter's tape later, the bambini had two surprise canopies. Since that first night, Julie's efforts have been refined by Ted who is, after all, a trained engineer. He secured the sheet at the top if each dowel rod with a binder clip, and will be swapping out the blue painter's tape for white duct tape.

But that first night, there was still delight. Joe--such a big boy--said, "I love it! I don't even know how to thank you!" Of course, he just had.

Another Birdie Brief

Santa left Clara some Ariel underwear, and some Hello Kitty underwear in her stocking. Tonight, Clara was sporting a Hello Kitty pair. You read that right, Brigade: tonight, Clara was sporting a Hello Kitty pair. After a return to Pull-Ups at night, she's been dry overnight for a few weeks, and in underwear for the past three nights that has still been dry in the morning.

Well Hello, Kitty.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

As a part of our occasional series, It's Hard To Be Three we can report that it is still hard to be three.  Not only does Our Hero love to sled, he also loves to ski.  So this morning, Ted took Joe to the secondhand sport store to get him his very own skis and ski boots.  With any luck, the weather will be such that they can hit the slopes this upcoming Friday on "report card marking day" on which Joe will not have school.

Julie had planned to take Clara to the open art studio at Kiddywumpus while the boys were off getting skis, but it was not to be.  Julie had laid some clothes out for Clara, including socks, and well, Clara WAS ALREADY WEARING SOCKS and thus the socks that Julie had laid out were, of course, cause for a fit.    So, too, was the fact that Julie did not leave the kitchen to come to the stairs to better hear the (loudly stated) proclamation that Clara was ALREADY WEARING SOCKS.  ("MommyMommyMommyMommyMommyMommyMOM-MMMYYY!!!  I TALKING TO YOU!!!")  So, too, was Julie's matter of fact statement that although she was unaware that Clara was wearing socks, now that she was, she thought that was lovely, and would thus encourage Clara to put the second pair of socks away and go about getting dressed.  Such nerve!  The very idea that Clara might put away the second pair of socks and continue getting dressed!  Julie set the timer and told Clara that if she wasn't dressed by the time it sent off, they just wouldn't be able to go.  Naturally, Clara continued to wail and thrash her way along, but dashed upstairs the moment the timer went off, appearing minutes later, dressed and nonplussed.

By then, it was too late to make it worthwhile to go to Kiddywumpus, but as Julie and Ted have learned the wisdom of revealing all in the fullness of time, Julie was able to make like a walk in the snow was the plan all along.  It didn't seem worth it to press the point that Clara doesn't get to call all the shots by denying all adventuring, the point having been made by Julie's refusal to pitch a fit herself before the timer went off.

So the Birds set off with Clara navigating.  Their walk took them by the neighborhood fairy garden to see if the fairies were still there, and to Joe's school to see the mosaic animals on its side.  It was the very picture of walking in a winter wonderland.  Birdie Brigade, you could almost hear the sleigh bells.

That how it is these days: moments in which you see the most trying aspects of Clara's age, while you struggle to see Clara herself, broken by moments in which you see so clearly Clara's appealing self-possession, confidence, and absolute content with the simplest of things like a walk in the snow with her mother to look for the fairies.

Of Sledding, Love, and Perspective

I have studied these blooms who publish the fact that nothing is tentative about love, have applauded their willingness to take love's ultimate risk of being misapprehended.

Mona Van Duyn, from A Bouquet of Zinnias

We had another good snow here Friday night into Saturday morning. Today was warm--for Minnesota in January anyway--with a bright blue sky, so late afternoon found Julie and Joe at the sledding hill. Frankly, Fans, it's more like a luge, but that makes it just that much more fun for those who love to sled and Our Hero loves to sled.

A dad who was there with his two nine-year-old twin daughters struck up a conversation with Julie while they hung out at the top of the hill. This dad was impressed with Joe's way with all of it--how he just takes off down the hill, how he trudges back up with his sled, and plunges back down--all without crying or whining about the inevitable spills and slips, and the cold, especially when the dad learned that Joe was five-and-a-half.

Of course, he'd left by the time Joe lost his grip on his sled's rope near the top of the hill, and refused--crying--to go and collect the sled from where it had slid, petulantly telling Juile she as being unfair when she refused to get it. (Our Hero did eventually go get it after he saw an older girl lose her grip on her tube, and then trundle back down the hill to retrieve it. Joe log rolled down and briefly decided that might be more fun than sledding.)

It all set Julie to thinking how hard it can be to apprehend another in all his or her fullness, and how love can make it that much more difficult to do so.  Because love can both cloud and magnify strengths, as well as flaws, in a way that is especially challenging for a parent loving a child who is unfolding.  Some of a child's qualities will be immutable while others are byproducts of an age or stage that will pass all too soon--or not soon enough--and love will make one celebrate some and excuse others, all the while muddling perspective as to which is which. So it is that "He's five!" can be an expression of warranted (and unwarranted) wonder and celebration, and of warranted (and unwarranted) exasperation and excuse.

The trick seems to be not letting the wonder obscure the exasperation, and vice versa, but it's a tricky trick indeed when love can so easily cause such misapprehension, and can itself be so easily be misapprehended.

So there was love today: there, flying down a hill on a silver sled; there, watching from the top of the hill; there, still the top of the hill, not making its way toward a runaway sled; there, log rolling down the same hill after the same sled; and there, walking home in the setting sun, sometimes side by side, sometimes hand in hand.

The Rainbow Loom

A boy and his loom cannot be parted.

So Santa didn't bring Joe a DS.  But Julie did get him a Rainbow Loom a few days after Christmas when she was at the mall with Grandma Connie so all is not lost.  The Rainbow Loom*, Fans, is a plastic pegboard onto which one can weave rubber bands in various patterns to be hooked in various other patterns with a crochet hook like tool to make rubber band bracelets (and other types of jewelry for your advanced Rainbow Loomers).  The RL is all the rage with your elementary school set--boys and girls alike--particularly with those who are a bit older than Our Hero.  Julie has a colleague who noted that the kids look like sweatshop workers doing piece work hunched over these things and that's a pretty accurate mental image: when we arrive to collect Our Hero from Kid's Place, there are easily eight kids huddled over their looms with their tackle box-like container next to them containing all their rubber bands.  It looks for all the world like a (color) picture out of How The Other Half Lives.

By now, you are all probably wondering where you, too, can get a true RL.   What could be more fun than making bracelets out of the colored rubber bands that look like what hip kids in the 80s with braces used?  Fans, you can get your RL at Michael's.  We know because Saturday morning found Julie and the bambini first at Jo-Ann Fabrics and then at Michael's in search of one of these tackle box-like containers.  Julie learned that Jo-Ann Fabrics is not an official RL purveyor and as they peddle only knock-off RLs, cannot offer the tackle box that holds the RL in addition to all the rubber bands.  As they left Jo-Ann Fabrics, Joe said with evident exasperation, "We should have just gone to Michael's."  (You can imagine how his tone and the sentiment went over with his mother who was on this seeming fool's errand.  Julie would note that when they entered the store, Joe said--and this is a direct quote, Fans: "It smells so good in here.  I want to stay here forever."  How fickle the five-year-old heart.)

But there is a God, because not only did Michael's carry these boxes that hold the rubber bands and the looms, they had them in stock--in blue, pink, and purple.  Joe selected a blue box and Julie, noticing that one could not buy an extra crochet hook tool, grabbed another RL thinking the extra $15 was worth the extra hook that was sure to be lost any day now.  (She also got a book that has step-by-step pictures for making the various designs because she was tired of, like, watching second grade girls--always the girls who have clearly taken Katy Perry to heart; ROAR!--on, like, YouTube, explain how to, like, hook this band over here, and this one over here!  And like, don't freak out if you mess up!  Because you can fix it if you don't, like, freak out!)

That, Fans, turned out to be one of the best $15 she ever spent because when she arrived home, she confirmed that the RL she had purchased at the mall was not a TRUE Rainbow Loom and--of course--knock-off RLs do not fit in the RL tackle box-like containers.  Of course they don't.  Of course they don't.  That, Fans, is patent law at work.

Now that the White House contains true RL, we can say that the knock-offs (or at least one of them) is, truly, but a pale imitation.  The true RL is better in every way, and we are pleased to report that Our Hero (and we) have mastered the simplest bracelet from start to finish.  You can see him finishing one here.

Naturally, Joe would like to make one of the most advanced bracelets.  But his desire to do so fueled his mastery of the simplest bracelet (because Julie finally got smart and told him if he wanted to run, he had to learn to walk) and now he's so caught up in making the simplest bracelet, that he's forgotten about the other--at least temporarily.

So, like, let us know, if you want a bracelet!  And, like, what colors.  We've got black, orange, blue, pink, and rainbow.

*You can read more about its origins here in a piece The New York Times did when the craze was taking off. 

Birdie's First Winter Gala

Fans, since last we left you, Birdie has appeared in her first KinderCare Winter Gala!  She and her Pre-B classmates performed two wintertime classics: Frosty the Snowman and Jingle Bells.  They sang both verses of Frosty which was an ambitious choice, but did allow for their best collective moment in the second verse with the culmination of the line "He led them down the streets of town, right to the traffic cop and only paused a moment when he heard him holler, 'STOP!'"  At about 1:47 in, you can hear Pre-B shout "STOP!" for all they're worth--can't miss it, Brigade.  (At about 42 seconds in, Clara twirls in a circle with "For when they placed it on his head, he began to dance around," which was her best individual moment.)

Jingle Bells was the stronger number by far, but it had the advantage of being shorter and the support of percussion instruments.  It also afforded the opportunity to shout "Hey!"--twice (at 35 seconds, and again at 47 seconds).  The lead in verse was a little shaky, but they killed the chorus (and who doesn't have to take a moment to remember something besides the chorus each season?).

This was by far the slickest Gala we've been to in our five years at KinderCare: audience members were given printed programs with the names of the classes, their students, and their selections written out in order and the lights were dimmed over the audience--both were firsts.  The entire events was also MCed for the first time by the Often Too Cool For School Mr. Mark which made for smoother transitions.  Not a single child cried while performing, which was also a first.  Clara at least was saving her tears up for later when she was so punch drunk tired she couldn't hold herself together for anything.  The pressures of the stage, you know. . .

While It Was Cold. . .

Fans, it is still cold here in the North Star State, but it was warm enough today that Joe's school reopened after its winter break and being closed these past two days because of the extremely cold temperatures. So the bambini were back to their regularly scheduled programming today. But Monday and Tuesday found them at home with Ted. Target encouraged its employees to work from home so Ted did while the bambini amused themselves with various activities.  They worked out with Ellen who is referred to like a close friend of the the family.  The bambini work out with Ellen in their bathing suits, which was ironic on Monday and Tuesday given the temperatures outside.  In Birdie's case, working out requires a number of wardrobe changes.  (Really anything is a good excuse to dispense with one ensemble and create another.) Working out segued into dancing for Clara.  You can see a brief snippet of it here. (Doesn't Berenice seem jazzed to have nearly everyone home with her still?)

The bambini also wiled away a fair amount of time watching some Berenstain Bears movies which they love because there are no "scary guys" in them.  It's always amusing to see which of the several 20-minute vignettes on a DVD will captivate them the most.  On the DVD we currently have out from the library, they are especially taken with an episode in which Papa Bear keeps getting hiccups because he's eating too fast: "When eating your food, remember to chew. It's not just good manners, it's healthy for you!"  Pearls of wisdom in rhyme, Fans.  Can't beat it.

Joe read to Clara a bit--Amelia Bedelia, Fancy Nancy--and onTuesday, Ted and the bambini came to St. Paul and took Julie to lunch after they poked around Julie's office and charmed a few of her colleagues. Fans, as you know, the bambini love a rock. Most rocks and pebbles are buried under the snow right now. Julie was amused to see them make a beeline for the various rocks she has around her office that she uses as paperweights.*

So it was a little of this and a little of that and here we are, looking forward to double-digit temperatures north of 0.  Apparently they will be here tomorrow.

*Our Little Red Sometimes Resident Fans maybe interested to know that three of her rocks came from the beach at Orient Point by the ferry. Practical Ted asked Julie if she was really going to pack rocks on their return home. Yes, yes, she was.   And she did.

A Day at the Beach?

Day 576 of the coldest winter ever found Julie and the bambini at Kiddywumpus' open art studio. (While there, they learned that Governor Dayton closed all K-12 schools in the state closed on Monday when the high will reach -14 in the Twin Cities--and be much colder up north. Kiddywumpus received several calls from people wondering whether they would be open Monday--yes, though clearly the idea is to stay in.) Today, the open art studio had magic modeling clay (which is like Play Doh) and sand art--you know, when you put some glue on paper, sprinkle (or dump with abandon depending on age and skill level) on colored sand and then shake off the excess? The bambini LOVED sand art. The sand art-ed away an hour. It was sort of like a day at the beach!

Time Travels

The arctic-like temperatures have limited our activities this winter break.  Ted, in an act of Shakleton-like heroism, took the bambini to the Minnesota Zoo today.  Their visit was of course focused on the indoor trails and thus, they were there when the fish in the big aquarium were fed by the diver.  (Joe shot a video of it with Ted's phone for Julie; she saw the--very--rough an unedited cut tonight.)

A few days ago, Julie had taken the bambini to the aquarium at the Mall of America in lieu of the zoo.  So, we are totally up on the distinction between an aquarium (animals that live in the water) and the zoo (animals that live on land or in the water, or both).

The aquarium at the Mall of America is pretty limited and probably counts on people thinking it, too, is overwhelming large like the mall that houses it.  It's piece de resistance is a large tank with a tunnel through it so that one is surrounded by fish, and sharks, and turtles as one walks through said tunnel.  (Joe learned that large groups of fish are called schools and has been trying out this new vocabulary word every chance he gets.)

On the way from the aquarium to Noodles for lunch, Julie commented that she and Daddy had once visited some turtles with hurt flippers at a sea turtle hospital.  (This was in South Padre Island, Texas, about a year after they'd been dating.)

She added that this was before they were even married and before Joe and Clara were born.  That comment prompted Joe to say, "Like in the 1950s?"  We don't know why that decade was selected, Fans, but Julie replied, "No, in the early 2000s."  She added that the 1950s was when all the grandparents were about his age.  From there, Joe moved on to what Ted and Julie had done after visiting the sea turtles, which was, in fact, going to lunch at a restaurant called Ted's restaurant.

Then later, over bowl of noodles, Joe asked when the dinosaurs were alive.  Julie replied that the dinosaurs roamed the Earth millions and millions of years ago.  Joe said, "Like back when Grandma and Grandpa were kids."  Sure, in the 1950s.

Time.  It's a tricky concept to nail down you know.

Tree House Dreams

The other thing Joe is desperate to do is build a tree house.  He and Birdie are, as you know, Fans, big Berenstain Bears Fans.  The B. Bears live in a tree house and Papa Bear is a carpenter and thus always building things like play tree houses and club houses.  In fact, it seems that most cubs in Bear Country have one or the other.  His latest is to build a tree house in an orange tree.  He reasons that doing so will allow him to simply reach outside for an orange when he wants a snack.  He plans to start tomorrow.  Our low tonight here in the Twin Cities is -15 degrees, and we've not had a high above 10 degrees in days and days.  Joe is undaunted.  He has saved his orange seeds from this evening.  (Really, they are tangerine seeds, but this seems a minor issue in the face of the climate challenges.)

Waiting For the Tooth Fairy

Joe is absolutely desperate to lose a tooth.  At least four kids in his class have lost teeth.  Their names are listed on a poster in the room.  Tooth losers are, thus, minor celebrities.  One day not so long ago, Julie found Joe sawing away at one of his bottom front teeth with his tooth brush.  She told him that teeth came out when the big teeth underneath them pushed the little tooth above them up and out, and that if he rushed the little tooth out of the way, he'd end up with a big, bloody hole in his mouth.  She embellished a bit so that he would stop his machinations with the tooth brush.  He has in fact stopped his efforts with the tooth brush, but his desire to lose a tooth remains undiminished.  A few days ago, while Clara was napping in Joe's bed, and Julie and Joe were painting the mopboards in Clara's room (well, Julie was painting; Joe was "painting"--in underwear and a pair of Clara's tights and her pink tutu), Joe again asked when he would lose and tooth and Julie again said she didn't know; that it would happen when it happened; but that it couldn't be rushed.  Joe confirmed that if it was rushed, that's when a big, bloody hole would result.  So that part sunk in!  Then, after a pause, he said, "I love you, Mommy."    It was a good heart-to-heart.