Cabin Weekend

We have packed up the clown car with beach towels, floats, inner tubes, and Berenice and are off, today, to Joe and Clara's friends Eli and Emma's family's cabin. It's in Wisconsin, through Stillwater on the Minnesota side, where we will cross the famous-around-here Stillwater lift bridge!  (Berenice will be going to sleep away camp, not the cabin.) We have just begun our journey and about to exit onto interstate 394, which has just prompted Clara to exclaim, "Yea! I three!" So far no one has asked if we are on the highway, but there's about an hour and a half to go. See you on the flip, Fans!

GOAL!!!!!

Joe's soccer team, the Longhorns, played its last game of the season Thursday night, against the Tigers. It was a beautiful summer evening, though not for the Longhorns whose single goal was kicked by Our Hero--into the Tigers' goal. (The whole stop-the-ball-and-turn-it-around-to-go-up-the-field is a skill the St. Louis Park Parks and Rec league's youngest members were just starting to understand as the six-week session drew to a close.) The Tigers won handily, but it's tough to say if the Longhorns felt too bad about it, which is the beauty of "organized" sports at five years old when one might be as interested in the ball and play as one is in, say, a dandelion near center field, or chatting up the big sister of a teammate, or toss the cones used in practice like frisbees. The key to watching this scene with 37- or 38-year-old eyes is to pretend you aren't watching an organized sport. That way, you won't wonder why your child is picking dandelions while a black and white checkered ball rolls around.

Joe was cheered on two of his current teachers, Mr. Mark and Ms. Susie and his former teacher, Ms. Manisha, all of whom were also there to also see two other kids who go to the KinderCare and were playing in the game. Super Fan Birdie did her usual slow melt toward bedtime from the sidelines.

And thus, we closed the books on Our Hero's first foray into organized sports.

Twins Game

Today was a picture perfect summer day. Sunny, 80, dry.  What better than to take the afternoon off and go to the stadium?  So it was for Ted and Joe while the women of the house worked and studied hard all day. The bonus feature was riding our bike to the game.  We have a "tag along" now for Joe which is remarkably easier to pull than a trailer, so we made it to the stadium (trail the entire way!) in about 25 minutes, locked up at one of the many (full) bike racks outside and headed in. On the way in we discussed the opposing team, the Kansas City Royals, and how Julie lived there as a kid and watched George Brett play. 

First stop was hot dogs for lunch, technically a "Dinger Dog" which was as big as Joe's arm and he ate every last bite!  By the end of the 3rd inning Joe wanted his ice cream which sounded like a good idea to Ted too. We got little helmut cups instead of cones, but Joe still managed to spill all over his clothes. We got back in time to see a Twins home run which meant fireworks. In the 4th inning we saw Babe win the mascot race (rare for him). And of course the 7th gave us Take Me Out... Ted offered to leave but Joe wanted to stay till the end. So by the start of the 9th they headed to visit Sue the organist. She chatted us up (she has to sit through a lot of long losing games), and Joe got to watch her pound out some song snippets. When Sue played her end of game chords it was time to head home.  We had another quick ride home, stopping to see the class tree, Marshmallow, upon which the kids had hung a poem today. The only bad part of the day was the score, 7-2 Royals. 

Getting the Garage In Order

Julie was asked recently what has been the biggest surprise about living at White House. She thought if two. First, she has not quite yet grown accustomed to its size relative to Raleigh House. Often at White House, she does not know where someone is and frets that Berenice has escaped. At Raleigh House, she always knew where everyone was and often, it was within a three-foot radius. Second, she has not yet grown accustomed to how when you have a dishwasher, you arguably need more than eight glasses, plates, and so on. But it's all rather lovely and every day, it looks less and less like we are in the midst of moving. Yesterday, a July day with September-like weather, everything in the garage was hauled out and then almost everything was put back in a new home.  But not before Joe had played with almost all of it.

Birdie's Imaginings

Birdie, in princess skirt, and Mommy's shoes

These days, Birdie spends a lot of her time pretending to be, variously, Mommy, a teacher, or a princess.  She will usually pretend to be Julie (in her role as Mommy) when she happens upon a pair of Julie's shoes.  Birdie will slide them on and then clomp and shuffle about saying, "I Mommy!  I Mommy!"  It makes perfect sense to Julie that her shoes are the hallmark of Clara pretending to be her, less because she thinks of herself as a shoe maven, and more because she recalls hearing Grandma Connie clip and clap about in her high heels when she was not much older than Clara is now.  At one point, she had a pair of the plastic high heels one can still buy in toy stores which she referred to as her "barkley shoes."  (All Julie can figure is that this was a way of saying the shoes were barking, or noisy, but the etymology could be rooted in something else altogether lost to the adult memory.)

Clara often plays teacher at the table during mealtimes, or when she's been tucked into bed before falling asleep.  At the table, she will instruct us all not to speak until she has raised her hand, put it down, and then pointed at one of us; then, that person may speak.  Often, Clara as teacher issues rather elaborate instruction sets.  When she is in bed, she "reads" to her animal friends.  Over the weekend, while Ted and Joe were out at one of the fiesta of birthday parties to which Joe was invited, Julie--all the way downstairs--heard Clara upstairs cry out "GOOD JOB, DORA!  GOOD JOB!"  accompanied by loud applause.  (One can only imagine that Dora had read the book or explored the whole of the African continent from Clara's bed.)

It's during outside time at school that Clara turns into a princess.  Daphne and Silvia are also princess, of course, as well as some other girl whose name we've not quite yet doped out.  Must study the cubbies soon!  Clara has allowed that Julie might visit Clara in her princess castle, but only if Julie wears a long dress.  No mention has been made of shoes though.  One assumes slippers.  Glass of course.