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. . .