thanksgiving and hanukah

...and here we are a whole week into December already.

Thanksgiving was lovely; we had dinner here with Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Liz, Aunt Sara, Uncle Dan, and Ezra, Aunt Sara's mother and brother, and Omi, who decided not to accompany Opa on a business trip to Europe and joined us instead. Despite some turkey-roasting mysteriousness (very odd thermometer readings; time for a new battery, apparently), everything worked out very well in the end, thanks in large part to much help in the kitchen from Omi and Aunt Liz, several dishes brought over by Grandma, and Uncle Dan's first (scrumptious) pie. We all hung out over the next couple of days, digesting. It was a nice time.

I also got an early Christmas present-- a sewing machine (-: I'm looking forward to making new curtains for Sam's room and a little pillow out of one of Frida's early dresses... though it's been many years since I've operated a sewing machine. I think I've done so since 8th grade home ec, but I can't be sure about that...

Just a couple of days (and a Mary Poppins sing-a-long) later, it was the first night of Hanukah. We managed to light the candles every night but one this year, and now Sam and I kinda-sorta know the prayers. We weren't very good about recording gift-opening in photos, but Sam is newly awash in construction toys (legos from G'ma and G'pa, a keva-plank-based ball course kit from his aunts and uncle, and k'nex robot kits from us), and Frida has new stacking toys and shoes, among other things.

We've spent the last few days in various stages and varieties of virus affliction-- stomach flu, brought home from Frida's daycare classroom, then colds for both me and F.-- so I've missed three days of work this week. Yesterday, though, when it was clear that post-barf Sam felt fine, but it was too late in the day for it to be worth going to school, we had a nice relaxed couple of hours running errands together before his last Math Circle of the year. He emptied out the charity box he's been depositing one of four weekly allowance quarters into and we bought some art supplies and dropped them off at a Toys for Tots box (along with some other gifts). We also bought some stationery supplies, and he noted that both the boxed cards of ancient Buddhist art and the cards of Inuit art look "myth-ish". As for Math Circle: Sam now has an understanding of factors and prime numbers (though in the car afterwards I had to clarify that it's Prime and not Crime numbers...), and both J. and I have been finding the class fun to sit through as well-- I have a hard time focusing on the work I bring with me if it's my turn to be there.

Frida's new favorite things to do are climbing on top of the one dining chair that has rungs underneath, and drawing with markers. To do the first, she steps up on the rung and then hauls herself the rest of the way with arms and knees, then stands up proudly. Once she figures out that she can actually *push* the chair to any higher surface she'd like to reach, life as we know it will be over. All of the kid markers we have in the house are washable, though we're not anxious to test exactly *how* washable they are. So for now she is fairly strictly supervised, and sits for many minutes at the little table that used to be Sam's "desk", and which he's now graciously sharing, making marks on paper with markers. She favors brown, which shouldn't be surprising given how much of her clothing is that color...

Frida is also getting increasingly good at making herself understood. Tonight, delaying bedtime, she signed "eat", and then said "wooo", meaning that she wanted cheerios (which she got and happily nibbled). She roars like a lion, beats her chest like a gorilla, and reports that dogs say "wfff", owls say "hoo hoo", cows say "mmmm" and roosters say "doo-doo". Most of her consonants are alveolar, heavily favoring "d" and "n" sounds: she calls me "Na-na" and balls "daww"; doggies, duckies, and Daddy all sound kind of like "Dah-dee!", but with differential levels of enthusiasm. (Daddy rates the highest, of course... in fact, when she had the barfing flu, she wanted to be held by J. all night and walked around, wanting me only for milk access and actively rejecting me the rest of the time. Our kids apparently read Freud. Far from minding, I gratefully rolled over and slept, knowing that there would be a day shift to follow.)

We're headed to MN and arctic weather in just over ten days, looking forward to Christmas with Omi and Opa, and to playing in the snow, but not so much to the single-digit temperatures. Here's hoping it warms up a bit before then.

Some deep thoughts to close: Tonight at dinner Sam first mused that he "can't imagine there being no me." And a little while later said, "You never die in dreams."

Pictures next time, I promise!

jokes from Sam

Two he made up today:

What do frogs like to eat?
French flies!

What do cats say when they are feeling impatient?
me-now!

(-:

We are also big fans of this one, which we heard at the Billy Jonas concert a couple of weeks ago:
Knock knock!
Who's there?
Interrupting chicken!
Interrup..
bGAWK bGAWK!

mom tricks

Things have been so hectic that I haven't been writing much down; the days go by in a blur and when there's a minute to spare I've been spending it organizing old paperwork (I *finally* found a filing system that I think will work for us; it's boring so I won't go into it, but I've been fighting paper piles forever and now I think I have a solution that's intuitive and also solves the "what to store for how long" issue. Yay! Now I just have to implement it backwards-- 2010 and 2009 are done.)

The weekend before Halloween, Grandma and Grandpa visited, and we had a nice weekend with them. Frida also had her first swimming class (with me), at the same time as Sam's class, in a different part of the same pool. It's been a little cold, so she's not as into it as I'd predicted based on her love of the bath. But she likes it. Sam's getting better at swimming, too; we need to get some more pool time in so he can practice and get more independent with his doggy paddling.

This weekend was absolutely gorgeous, especially yesterday. We spent some time outside in the afternoon, and I had to take some pictures of the Japanese maple against the sky:





The kids ran around but I couldn't get either of them to pose. Frida loves going up and down the stairs:



Yesterday afternoon Sam went to a birthday party at a pool. After swimming and before cake, I was helping him get his socks back onto wet feet. He was complimentary about my skills, watching me succeed where he’d so recently failed:
“How’d you learn to do that?”
“It’s a mom trick.”
“You mean you learn how to do it when you become a mom?”
“Yup.”
“Do dads learn it too?”
“Yup.”
He got his scheme-y face.
“Mom, I have a plan. When I get older, I’m going to get married, and then I’m going to have a baby with the person I’m married to. Then I'll learn that trick too!”
“That sounds great, Sam!”
“It’s going to be a woman that I get married to, ok?”
“OK, that sounds good too.”
“I already know who it is. But it’s a secret. I’m not going to tell you. It’s somebody I know already.”
(More secretive, scheme-y smiling.)
“Okey-dokey, Sam.”

Tonight after dinner before bed, the four of us went for a short walk in the neighborhood. Frida was toddling along as fast as she could, occasionally growling at Sam, or shrieking with excitement as she tried to catch him. Sam was skipping and hopping along ("I can hop like a kangaroo forever") and thinking thoughts, which he shared with us generously and pretty much continuously. "I have an idea for what to do if I wanted to scare away a bad person. I would look really fierce-- fiercer than I am. I'm not really fierce, but I would look fierce..."

halloween

Sam and his friend Tinkerbell (Judy, one of his best friends from school) this evening, just before going out:







Frida and I stayed home-- we both have colds. She wore her costume anyway (she also wore it to daycare on Friday). You can't see the black-and-white striped leggings under the orange skirt for the full effect, sadly, but it's pretty great.





Bonus: Frida likes to loop various things over her arms and carry them around like purses. Underwear is a big hit, especially when it's colorful. Recent post-bath (Sam was still in the bath):

pumpkins

We went to a pumpkin patch today and got a bunch-- 3 to carve, 2 more for pie, and a couple of others for J's lab. Last year I went alone with a newborn and Sam, and went to 3 different farms before I found a pick-your-own (i.e. wander through the fields), which Sam and I both had somehow decided was a necessary part of the experience. This year all four of us went, and we knew which farm to go to. Much easier all around!

It was a gorgeous sunny crisp fall day.







Sam found an earthworm in a clump of dirt:









We've also begun construction of Sam's halloween costume. Tonight we got back from dinner with friends to find the first painting job on it dry. Sam tried it on. "I love my costume so much. What's the opposite of breaking your heart?"

yogurt!

Frida has a recent love of yogurt. It probably helps that it's sweetened. She adamantly refuses all help eating it. But she's very happy about the process.



She can manage the spoon ok, though it's often upside down. Fortunately full-fat yogurt sticks on pretty well.



Hamming it up for the camera. She likes to roar.



After a while she abandons the spoon and just uses her fingers. This works better than you'd think. She gets at least 50% of the yogurt into her mouth.



Sam cannot bear to watch this process.



Though if you note the mess around his plate, you'll see that he's not exactly fastidious. Honestly I think he's just grossed out by yogurt, not by the mess so much.

September

Whoa, that month went fast. Here's a newsy update, in case you've been squirming with curiousity about our family's activities.

Frida started daycare, which involved a lot of crying the first week, a bit of crying the second week, and then it was smooth sailing (yay!). She is attached to all three of her teachers, one of them especially; she is learning some new signs (importantly, for "eat" and "more", but given that a classmate three months older than her is signing a lot, and she watches him intently, she'll be picking up many more); she loves the toys there; she naps well on her little mat. I have a suspicion, due to a newly-appeared rash, that she's allergic to the iron-on name labels I spent an hour and a half ironing into most of her clothes last night-- dammit!-- but hopefully I'm wrong about that: we'll see if she has the same reaction tomorrow to new clothes, same label. She and Stephanie are still delighted to see each other when they get to hang out (like tonight, when J. and I went out to dinner to celebrate the anniversary of our engagement), but I think we made a good decision with this place. Here she is on her first day of daycare, wearing a onesie that Stephanie decorated (with Sam in a matching t-shirt that he colored in, after Stephanie outlined the same flag pattern for him):



Frida is funny and mischievous and opinionated. She loves to put things on her head and wear them like hats, including Sam's recently-shed underwear:



A couple of weekends ago I was at the farmer's market alone with both kids, picking up our farm share, and realized I'd forgotten a sling or carrier to put her in. The market is small and in a blocked-off parking lot, so there's no car traffic through it and it's not near the street. I set her down on the ground when I needed both hands to pay, and she took off running in that stiff-legged toddler gait (away from the street, thank goodness). Sam followed her calling back to me, "Help! Frida's running away!" so I jogged over to scoop her up, set her down momentarily to juggle my bags of food, and before I turned around she'd already gotten taken off again for the far reaches of the parking lot, chuckling delightedly.

She likes to rearrange things in the kitchen drawers to which she has access (all of the low ones; we've moved breakables out of the bottom drawers and locked up the cabinets with anything dangerous, so she has free range through the pots and pans, storage containers, and towels/napkins). We find her soccer ball tucked into the towel drawer and one of Sam's shoes in the stockpot. Sometimes she'll bring one of her lunch containers to me, emphatically signing "eat", which means she wants yet another snack. Frida eats tiny amounts at a time still, so she eats many times a day (she's not the only one like that in her daycare classroom-- they've settled on 4 meals a day, 2 snacks and 2 lunches). Between this and the fact that she likes to move move move, she's still tiny for her height at <18 lbs (her height is less remarkable at around the 25th %ile); her 2-month-old cousin Ezra is likely to outweigh her before long! Our pediatrician is fortunately not worried about it, mostly because she's so clearly healthy and happy and active, and because she eats a variety of foods... just never very much of any one of them at once. Now that she can communicate about this, she often signs "eat", is given some avocado or meatball or crackers, has 3 or 4 happy bites, and then is emphatically done. And repeats the process an hour or so later. If we don't give her food more often? she eats the same amount at each meal, and just eats less overall. So, for now, we give her food often.

Frida usually likes to feed herself. Sometimes this gets a bit messy, and once recently she turned into the Swamp Thing and had to go right into the bath after dinner (black bean soup with rice, with a large dollop of sour cream added to her portion-- she LOVED it):



Sam is really liking being in kindergarten for the second time (he was a "junior kindergartner" last year as a 4.5-year-old, so while some of his former classmates went up to first grade, he and the other 3 former-junior kids are in the same classroom this year, joined by a new crop of combined "junior" and regular kindergartners). All the stuff that used to challenge him is much easier: waiting his turn when he wants to tell a teacher something; staying quiet; keeping track of his stuff. He's developing closer friendships with two specific kids, including one with whom he plays on the school playground most (non-rainy) days, accompanied by Stephanie and by the other boy's very nice but non-English-speaking grandfather.

The class is doing a year-long study of the life cycle of the monarch butterfly. So far they've had 5 caterpillars build chrysalises and emerge as butterflies since the beginning of the school year. This is perfect for Sam, who loves butterflies. One day over the summer, he and Stephanie made this elaborate butterfly exhibit, which they'd taped to the window (I just moved it into a frame to preserve it). They started out cutting out and coloring butterflies on construction paper based on pictures in books that he has, then went to the branch library down the street when they needed more pictures. Apparently Sam marched up to the librarian and said, "We're looking for books about butterflies so we can use them for our exhibit."



Sam's also signed up for a math class ("Math Circle") outside of school; we'll see how that goes. He loves talking about math concepts and, more generally, analyzing things, and Cambridge schools are a bit notorious for being weak in math. I feel like math is something that's hard to make up once one hasn't learned it as a kid (like music and language skills), and we've had friends who've liked the Math Circle as a way to make math alive and exciting (while learning a lot). One of the activities they've done is something he now wants to do all the time with us: a "function machine" in which one person thinks of a function (e.g. "add 3") and the other person has to figure out what it is by putting in a series of test numbers (e.g., 1) and being told what comes out (4, for those of you playing along).

He still wants to mostly read nonfiction. We've spent most of the last month reading two books about space, one on the planets and the other on the search for life outside Earth. He falls asleep looking at one or both of these many nights:



At least these are interesting (vs. the more pre-school-oriented nonfiction books, with lists of unrelated facts about types of trains). His latest favorite thing from the library is Eyewitness Videos (topics we've borrowed so far: Volcanoes; Insects; Butterflies and Moths; Rainforest; Dinosaurs; Rivers and Ponds).

Sometimes I let him decide what we're going to have for dinner. One night when the late-summer bounty of fruits and veggies was at its peak, he picked fruit. I convinced him to add ham sandwiches. So our respective plates looked like this (can you guess whose is whose? and identify the six different fruits we enjoyed?):



He's very articulate about his emotions and his emotional needs, which is a great quality in general, I think, and leads to some very sweet exchanges, but also some funny ones. When he's upset, he does a choreographed Angry Dance that involves a lot of pouting and stomping. One night recently he tried to practice it, but was not quite mustering the emotional expression. "It's hard to practice something that's how you feel," he explained.

And yesterday on the way home in the car (sometimes he and Stephanie take the bus home; other times they hang out elsewhere and meet me on campus as I'm heading to pick up the Bean), he booped her on the nose, as he likes to do (and she sometimes enjoys, and other times is enraged by). "Every single time I boop your nose, a little bit of love comes out of my finger."

He likes to wake Frida up in the mornings, singing softly while stroking her head, "Bean-a, wake u-up! Bean-a, wake u-up!"

J. was gone for most of the second half of the month (he was on TV! among other things. That resulted in someone emailing to suggest that J. might be a perfect match for his daughter-- ha!). We survived, and J's not traveling much for the next couple of months, just hiding away trying to get lots of writing done. I have, as always, a ton of respect for single parents. Whew. I'm applying for a few tenure-track and FT adjunct jobs near here for next year, but I'm not sure how we will deal with the craziness if I have a more demanding FT job (and two of the options involve substantial commutes). But we'll deal with that question if and when it's ours to deal with.