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:

Sam and Ezra, Thanksgiving

Sam and his baby cousin:

PS

Today at my parent worktime shift at daycare, I watched Frida and C., a slightly younger baby, dividing up a set of squeezy bath toys. I thought they would squabble over them, but F. handed two of the four over to C. as C. reached for them, and afterward (as I called over "nice sharing, Frida!", she signed "thank you". And just now she signed it again after giving me a piece of paper she'd found on the ground. I think for her it means "I just did something thanks-worthy!" (Kind of like when Sam was about 20 months old, and would stride into his daycare classroom calling out "Hi, Sam!")

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!