June

Well here we are halfway into July... but I'll do a quick reprise of June.

We went to Germany and to Switzerland in conjunction with a talk J. was invited to give in Geneva, visiting my aunt and uncle and two of my cousins (and their families). Sam and Frida met all 7 of their German second-cousins, saw castles, a cave, and two zoos, enjoyed train rides through Germany, and ate a lot of sausage and a lot of ice cream.

My aunt and uncle's house is well set up for young children, due to frequent grandchildren visits. We spent a couple of days there getting acclimated and seeing some local sights, and my aunt and uncle took excellent care of us:











We then took a train to Munich and visited the youngest of my three cousins. Sam and his cousin Lea, who's the same age, got along famously despite not knowing any words in each others' languages:









Meanwhile Frida and her cousin Hanna, who's two years older than she is, also hit it off:






Frida never fully adjusted to European time, and napped at odd times in odd places (often on benches while we were out for lunch)... and stayed up til midnight most nights. We didn't push it, figuring it'd just make things easier once we were back home.



She really enjoyed the zoos-- something we haven't done for years at home:



We took the train back to my aunt and uncle's home in southwestern Germany, and met the middle of my three German cousins there with his family. My uncle's model trains are much admired by his grandkids ansd now also by Sam:







After another couple of days, my uncle drove us to Zurich, where the oldest cousin lives with his family (and J. caught a train to Geneva). I didn't take many pics til the last day there, when J. joined us again for a day of sightseeing before we caught a plane back home:





And then... we saw Grandma and Grandpa for a couple days (they were here for Uncle D's residency graduation); J. and I celebrated our anniversary; Sam had his last week of kindergarten; we all got sick at various overlapping times; we spent a nice weekend in New Hampshire with friends (though J. spent most of it coughing and headachy); Frida settled back into daycare; Sam lounged around for a week then started camp; I got a year older; and two days ago I finally stopped feeling sick every evening after three weeks of blah. Apparently being in my late 30s includes taking longer to kick viruses out of my body. Let's hope not.

Two days before camp started, we scheduled a playdate with a former preschool classmate of Sam's, who'd be in his group at camp, but whom he hadn't seen much over the past two years since starting kindergarten (his friend goes to another school). J. and Sam met Eli and Eli's mom for ice cream, and then J. drove them all back to Eli's house where Sam stayed for a while playing. On the way over, Eli's mom asked Sam what he'd like to play with there (Sam has had quite a few playdates over there, it's just been a while). "Whatever Eli wants to do," Sam said, gallantly, then explained, "That way we both get something good. I get to have a playdate, and Eli gets to choose what he wants. It's kind of like a relationship. Actually, it's like a symbiotic relationship." Yep, that pretty much captures it.

Sam's camp involves an 8AM bus pickup on campus, where he's dropped back off again after 5, totally exhausted, tanned despite a thorough application of sunscreen every morning, and happy. Frida and I pick him up every day-- I leave work early and pick her up first, because he's too tired to do much of anything by the time I get him-- and she has been really intrigued by his school bus. "Dadah go Vam bus?" she asked, one day. "No, sweetie," I said, "The bus is for big kids." She thought for a moment. "Dadah go beebee bus? (baby bus)" she asked, hopefully. (Frida loves buses, and our bus rides are always highlights for her. But she hasn't gotten a trip in a big yellow bus ever. One day soon enough...)

May

On Mother's Day we went out for a fancy brunch at the restaurant around the corner from our house, then for a walk at the lovely huge landscaped Mt Auburn Cemetary, joined by our beloved upstairs neighbor Paula. Frida, who'd lasted surprisingly well through most of brunch, was as usual adamant about wanting to "wot" (walk).





Fast forward a few cool rainy weeks to this past Friday, which was in the high 80s suddenly. The pansies which have been gracing our back porch window boxes have thrived in all the cool rain; their days are numbered.



Between college kids leaving (and graduating!) and our other regular afterschool babysitter starting a new degree program which leaves her less flexible, we didn't have an afterschool babysitter for Sam on Friday. So I took him to run some errands, get frozen yogurt, and get his hair cut, finally; with it plastered to his face and neck he was well ready to part with the length. I couldn't really describe to the woman cutting it what I wanted, though, so he ended up with a mullet... which I trimmed up on the back porch once we picked up Frida and came home. And then trimmed just the wee bits of extra-long hair on the back of her head as well. Sam takes after Omi and me in having a LOT of hair-- this was after he'd already had a fair bit taken off at the barber shop:



Frida these days is chatty and funny and affectionate and opinionated. If she's awake when Sam comes into our bed in the mornings, or whenever she wakes up thereafter, she insists, "Vam! haut!" (Sam! hug!). She is very very particular about who does what, and insists on who does her carseat buckle (herself, the top clip, and usually "Vam", the bottom clip-- if he's there, that is). She wants to climb into the car and into her seat herself, and on the occasions when we're in too much of a hurry to permit this and she is plopped unceremoniously into her seat and buckled in, she yells for a bit and then grumbles for the entire ride across Cambridge (Hrumph. Meh. Wah, at regular intervals from the backseat, prompting Sam to request that the music be turned up). She wants to do everything herself except the things she's bored of doing herself, like putting food into her mouth. This, she requests of specific other people (me, Opa, Paula, Grandma-- not necessarily someone seated conveniently close to her, either). She has a particular cackle that she emits when she's being naughty, but she is also learning and repeating rules. For example, I had told her very firmly that she can't nurse if she's going to press her feet on my face, inside my shirt, or against my arm, so while nursing she will stop nursing for a moment at random intervals to intone, "Doot, dais, no. Doot, dirt, no. Doot, arm, no," waiting for confirmation from me before she smiles and returns to nursing. And though I'm never more than a step away from her on the sidewalk, she stops at the crossing, says "deet!" and reaches for a hand before stepping into the street. Progress!




And the new-haircut pic you've been waiting for, featuring a lego shark (Sam follows in his father's and uncle M's footsteps with the lego love. When he got a new lego set from Grandma and Grandpa recently, he looked at the picture on the box then immediately asked if he had to make what was in the picture or could use them to make other things).



J got back this afternoon from the last of his spring travels, hurrah! We leave in just over a week, for 12 days in Germany and Switzerland; J's giving a talk and we grabbed the chance to visit my cousins and aunt/uncle for the price of two tickets (Frida is lap-baby-able for just a bit longer, and light enough that that seemed feasible). Looking forward to meeting the 5 new cousins who've been born in the 7 years since I was there last.

And in the unlikely event that someone reading here doesn't know from FB or more direct channels, I got and accepted the job offer, so will have a full-time teaching position next year and likely the following; after that it's open again. I will have to convince them in those years that I am indispensable (-: And I'll have four months next summer free for research, science outreach, house stuff, and/or hanging with the kids-- combination of those things. Whee!

March

One day in late February when Frida was home with something-or-other (cold + fever? another stomach thing? I forget, it all blurs together):



The view out the window: house across the street being demolished, providing lots of awesome toddler entertainment.



She felt better fast, and was up to her usual exploratory tricks:



In mid-March we went to FL for a week to visit Grandma and Grandpa. We left the cameras at home, but brought the videocamera and shot a bit of video. My laptop is too full to download any from the camera, though, so I'll do that as soon as I can make some space.

The weather in South Florida was perfect the entire week. Walks, hanging out at the little park near Grandma and Grandpa's house, counting lizards, counting lizards, and hanging out at the fancy club pool. [Sam can just barely doggy-paddle short distances. We've taken a break on the swimming lessons (been doing taekwondo this half-year instead) but need to get back to those before summer camp-- at the recent birthday party of a friend, about 2/3 of the kids could swim independently already, and it'll certainly be nice not to have to watch Sam as closely once I start taking Frida in the water more. She's not allowed in the big pool at Grandma and Grandpa's club, but she loved splashing in the baby pool.]

At the end of the week Aunt Liz and Aaron surprised us all by coming down for a couple of days to visit, having just found out that they matched for residencies at their joint first choice. It was great to be able to see them too, and to get to know Aaron a little bit, since we'd just barely met him before.

The day after we got back was Sam's sixth birthday! We went to Flatbread (awesome local brick-oven, local-ingredients pizza place) for bowling + pizza. Sam has a somewhat unconventional but surprisingly effective technique:



Frida didn't actually bowl, but she contemplated the pins and her future as a candlepin bowler:



Sam finished his meal with a brownie sundae. Yum.



Frida eyed it eagerly (and was eventually given a bit). You can get a good sense of her mischievous expression here; we've been seeing it more and more recently.



(post-first children seem to get sweets and general junk food a lot earlier than first children do, and a lot more frequently thereafter!)

We'd originally scheduled Sam's party for the next weekend, but first Frida got the stomach flu (while J. was traveling) and then just as he was back and I was all caught up with laundry, I got it... on the morning of the party. We rescheduled for the following weekend. It was a lot of fun; will post pics as soon as I've heard back which parents are ok with me posting pics of their kids. We had a rainforest theme, with some of the saved decorations from Sam's family week at school, and a bunch of games lined up to keep 8 5-6-7-year-olds occupied and thus not tearing up the house. Sam has a nice cohort of friends and has really settled comfortably into school; I think he's ready for first grade and will enjoy it.

He got a bunch of games for his birthday; we've been enjoying playing Uno, Othello and Guess Who? with him. It's nice that we're getting to be able to do more and more mutually enjoyable things together. His books are now actually fun and interesting to read, even the (still-favored) non-fiction ones. (It's not that I don't also love Frida's board books-- mostly because I have disappeared the ones that I can't bear to read, and so we have a large and largely charming assortment-- but after the nth reading of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, one does crave a bit more content.)

Sam learned about powers of ten in Math Circle last week, and that night Josh blew his mind with this video. He's reading more and more easily, and writing as well; by the time he got through all of his birthday thank-you's, he could whip one off in mere minutes (especially when motivated by the promise of watching an episode of Wild Kratts, his latest PBS kids science show obsession, once he'd finished that day's allotment of cards).

Late in March, our new couch was finally delivered. We'd planned to get a smallish full-size couch that's kept in stock, but as soon as our futon-couch was out (Craig's List), we liked the empty space so much that we decided to wait the extra 8-10 weeks for the "apartment size" couch. It fits nicely in our little living room, and still seats all four of us comfortably. It's not nearly as cool looking as the mid-century-esque, pale blue velvet one I briefly lusted after, but it's much more comfortable than our old futon-couch and looks way better. And, as I noted to a friend recently, we are not in the pale blue velvet time in our lives. We are in the brown microsuede time in our lives.




Frida has fully entered the "do it myself" phase of toddlerhood, pointing to her chest and saying "dah dah" (her name for herself), meaning that she will do it. This is easily confused with her sign + word for help, which consists of holding her open hand against her chest and saying "hahp". This is all well and good (if a bit slooow) when she is capable of doing whatever it is she'd like to do on her own-- go down the stairs, for example. It's less good when she simply isn't able to do what she wants. Tonight, for example, her bedtime snack: she wanted O's with milk, and after I let her choose the bowl herself and put the O's into the bowl herself, I of course wouldn't let her pour the milk (from the half-full gallon jug) herself, and told her so calmly, despite her insistence. Result: a screaming body-flinging-on-floor fit. After she calmed down, with some help from a hug, I brought the bowl (with milk and O's) to the table-- and she promptly upended it on the table in a continuing fit of pique. And then when I wiped that up with a rag (instead of letting her pick up the individual O's and replace them in the bowl, one by sopping one, as milk dripped onto the floor and her lap), she freaked again. Our days aren't quite this dramatic-- it was bedtime, and she was extra tired-- but oy it's exhausting.

And then there's the bolting: This past weekend, it was time to get Sam some new jeans. All but 4 of his current pants/jeans show a significant portion of his socks. So we went to the nearby cute little mom-run consignment store, with toys in the back. The door was propped open in the sudden springy warmth we had this past weekend. Sam had to pee on no less than 3 occasions during the trying on of 5 pairs of jeans (much water consumed post-taekwondo), and took an eteeeeernity to pull pairs of pants on and off his body while squawking in exaggerated embarrassment each time Frida or I opened the curtain of the single changing stall, and mid-way through all of this Frida discovered the open door and ran for it a few times before they kindly closed it for us. In the end, we managed to nearly double the number of wearable pants in his drawer without losing Frida in the process, phew. J's gone most of the next month and a half of weekends (traveling 8 times in 10 weeks), and I can't stop running errands altogether until June... but days like this? leave me wiped out.

Frida's vocabulary has been growing together with her pushes for independence, accompanied by occasional co-opting of whole, complete-with-intonation expressions. Recently: many dramatic exclamations of "oh nooooo!" (with frequent dropping of objects just to be able to say it). She still doesn't pronounce many consonants, so we do a lot of guessing based on subtle differences in vowel sounds, but her consonants too are getting clearer by the day. She makes frequent references to songs, routines, and books-- e.g., whenever she sees a penguin picture or photo anywhere, she turns her head side to side (from Eric Carle's From Head to Toe book); whenever she's on the bed she mimics jumping, then shakes her finger and says "nondies", i.e. "monkeys", from "no more monkeys jumping on the bed!" And her social awareness is growing, too; she loves feeling in on a joke, and laughs along sociably whenever any of us are laughing at a joke or cartoon or interaction, even if she couldn't possibly know what we're laughing about.

In me news, I had a great job interview early in March for an adjunct position at a college near here. After it was over, I decided to finally get my nose pierced, something I've been thinking about doing since ca. 2003. It didn't hurt as much as I thought it would, and I like how it looks; a mama friend whose nose ring I have long admired came with me as my nose doula and inspiration. I found out the other candidate for the teaching position was internal and was hired, but the department voted to ask the Dean to create a second position for me; fingers crossed, because I think it would be very good for me right now.

confetti

Last night when I informed Sam that his friend Judy would be extending their afternoon playdate by staying for dinner, he said the news "filled his heart with confetti." They had a good time (see below). Last time she was here (a few weeks ago), I was in the kitchen while they constructed various things at the dining room table. Sam began a declaration: "Judy, I love you *so* much, that..." and she cut him off: "Sh! Not in public!" Aww.

(On another previous occasion, noted by Stephanie, Sam requested that she (Stephanie) draw a picture of a god pretending it's going to eat someone. "If it looks exactly like The Monster, I can tell Judy that it's just a god so she knows." Sam and Judy spend a lot of time talking and thinking about The Monster, first observed in Judy's house but since then seen numerous times by both of them as well as a coterie of classmates, and which they battle continuously and enthusiastically. As Sam put it to a friendly purple-haired Trader Joe's staffer, who'd handed him a sample, a few weeks ago: "The Monster is what really brought us together.")

Sam's kindergarten Family Week was last week. On Monday, we went in almost an hour earlier than usual in order to decorate the Drama Area-- Sam had requested a rainforest, and I'd spent a few evenings the previous week cutting big leaves out of green construction paper with him, and then stapling them to green streamers. I'd also made some paper parrots and snakes. We attached all of them to the ceiling in the classroom. After the kids got there and had their morning meeting, we had the Family Interview: the four of us were asked a series of questions by the class (well, Frida didn't spend that much time in her chair, preferring instead to rearrange the date-number cards on the calendar behind us). Where are your ancestors from? What's your favorite letter? Kind of art to do? Type of car? Thing to wear? Then J. took Frida to daycare, and I stayed on to do a "special snack" with rotating groups of kids: I'd brought sushi rice, squares of nori, and toppings-- sliced Japanese omelette, cucumbers, and avocado. So the kids smooshed sushi rice onto the nori (or just onto a napkin, if they were wary of the nori), and added toppings as they liked, then dipped into a little bowl of soy sauce. Reactions ranged from delighted (both by seasoned sushi lovers and enthusiastic newbies) to skeptical, but everyone at least tried the rice. Three hours after I got to work, just as I was getting out of a meeting with a team of research assistants, I got a call from one of Frida's daycare teachers-- she'd thrown up. I picked her up and spent the next two and a half days at home with her. Thursday she was well enough to go back, and J. dropped her off while I headed back to Sam's classroom to do the postponed special activity. Last year we did a big didactic "parts of the brain that do X" activity, but this year we changed it up and made animal masks out of paper plates. Whew. (Thursday afternoon was my worktime at Frida's daycare-- it's a coop-- so I only worked one full day last week. Oy.)

Snippet of video from this evening, taken by our upstairs neighbor on her fancy new phone:

felt mousies

for Valentine's Day.

snow and snow and snow

For the week leading up to Christmas, we went to Minnesota. We were delayed by a day on the way there (our flight was canceled after we were already at the airport, with the car parked in long-term parking, all the luggage and both carseats checked, and the four of us seated at the gate eating lunch). When we got to Minnesota, we found what we thought of, at the time, as a lot of snow. Plenty for me and Sam to make a snow monster:



and for Sam to go sledding even in the backyard.

Opa took Sam and J. downhill skiing, and Sam had a ski lesson:



Sam and I made a gingerbread house:



On Christmas Eve, J. stayed home w/Frida, while Sam and I accompanied Omi and Opa to their church to hear Omi play violin together with the young recorder-playing son of the church organist. It was the early, carol-filled children's service; Sam was much less into the carols (he sat quietly drawing monsters all over the paper program) but listened very intently to the story about "everyday angels" told by the pastor.

That night we opened gifts, per German (and Omi/Opa) tradition:



We were supposed to fly back on the 26th, but this time snowstorms in the Northeast delayed us for two days. One upside of this was that we got to see my friend DeNean and her kids, who returned home from their holiday travel the day we would've left.



Sam had his first Wii encounter, and Frida was charmed by DeNean's oldest, Grace (who was a flower girl at our wedding! but is now old enough to be a fantastic babysitter).



Then we got home to a bit of snow:



And then it snowed some more, and some more, canceling school about once a week all of January, including during the week J. went away for an intense writing week:



Those piles (pictured in the previous post) on either side of the driveway are towering 8 or so feet high, making it very hard to drive in and out; similar piles all over the city make it tough to see around corners for traffic and to find on-street parking (meaning a lot of folks park halfway into driving lanes, making driving tricky as well).

Sometimes it's fun to get out in the snow. Sam made a quincy with the boys next door and their dad, and went sledding with J:



But other times it's just "wintry mix" and rain/sleet/ice, so we've been doing a bunch of fun indoor stuff. Like folding all of the paper-alphabet-animals that Uncle Markus sent Sam:



or drawing, with the gorilla that Opa gave Frida:



I was very happy to find a family-oriented Day of Service activity to do with both kids on MLK Day, put on by these fantastic folks. Sam made a bunch of valentines for house-bound Meals on Wheels clients.

In not-fun indoor activities, Frida had her first ear infection, spending a miserable couple of feverish days before we figured out it wasn't a passing reaction to her vaccines.



Amoxycillin worked well, but then a week later she had an allergic response (Grandpa figured out what was going on-- we thought it was a rashy virus). Benadryl followed amoxycillin. She's fine now. (And can eat surprising quantities of cheerios with milk.)




She also got her first haircut-- just the bangs-- while Sam, for his part, decided he wants to keep growing his hair until it's long. Sometimes in the mornings it looks kind of wild:



Hope you're well amidst all the crazy weather.

quickie

A long update w/lots of pics and a Winter Holiday report is in the works, but here's something sweet from yesterday. Walking to taekwondo in Central Square, we looked down River St. at a pink sunset sky. "Look at that beautiful smoke!" Sam pointed to a smokestack by the river with a Mary Poppins-esque billow coming out of it. "Yup, it's all nice and purple-y against the sky, isnt' it?" I said. "It's beautiful to look at, but bad for the Earth," said Sam.

More snow today, devolving to wintry mix later on. Here's what it looked like in front of our house over the weekend: