Audiobooks

For the last year or so, the kids (esp Jack) have been very into audiobooks. We started with 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' read by Erik Idle. He's a great narrator and the story is so rich and enjoyable in the way of all great children's literature. After listening to that at least 10 times, I needed a change so we moved onto all of the Ramona Quimby books. Stockard Channing narrates those and she is also amazing. There are 6 books in that series and after listening to all of those at least 10 times, I had to move on. We listen mostly in the car but sometimes at home and I am always listening too because the stereo is in our living space.

I tried a lot of different audiobooks but the bar is very high for what interests Jack. We tried the Henry Huggins series (we did not make it through one book), the Cat in the Hat and other Dr. Seuss stories (we made it through a couple of those),  and Tales of the Fourth Grade Nothing (10 minutes).

We started The Boxcar Children. He was interested but when he learned I'd procured the Harry Potter series, he wanted nothing else. Ryan has been reading the series to him. He has now heard each of the first three books several times. The audiobooks are narrated by Stephen Fry who is as good as Erik Idle or Stockard Channing.

Jack listens to audiobooks with the same rapt attention that he stares at a monitor. If you talk to him, he won't hear you. He also really listens because we talk a lot about the characters in the books. Do we think they are good or bad, nice or mean, etc? He learned a lot about manners from the Ramona books, and he learned about sarcasm from Willy Wonka (although he doesn't know what sarcasm means he understands when Wonka uses it).  I think he liked the Boxcar children because there are no adults around and the kids have adventures independently. Harry Potter's allure is obvious.

It's lots of fun. My challenge is finding really, really good children's books.

Vacation

Last Saturday, we drove out of town for our first family vacation. In the past, we have always visited people we knew (usually my family in Arizona) but this time the majority of our trip was taken alone. We had a long drive since our ultimate destination was Sandpoint, ID.  We took our time .. wandering east and saw some cool sites.

We stopped in Ellensburg:

Jack enjoyed the skatepark

Interesting yard art

Crazy summer storm

 For the first couple of days, we visited friends in Pullman, WA. We'd never visited Pullman and we loved it. Our friends have a 7 year old son and they are super outdoors people. They own every piece of outdoor gear imaginable -- kayaks, sail boat, bicycles. They have a beautiful home with a view of the little city ... a fire pit in the back yard and even a hot tub.  The kids had a blast.

Palouse Falls State Park

Coolest outdoor pool ever

Sailing on the Snake River

Jack and Ryan kayaking on the Snake River

We arrived in Sandpoint on Monday and stayed through the 4th of July.  At first, I was unhappy. We stayed at a lodge on the Pend Oreille River but our cabin was so dark, it felt like a cave. It was old and too small. I'd planned to be able to cook there but it would not have been comfortable with the kids. I also felt that the location was not kid-friendly. Then I figured out what kid-friendly really means: a kid-friendly place is one where kids can play relatively unsupervised so adults can relax. This was not that place. At first, our kids seemed to need our constant entertainment and I didn't feel up to it.

We considered leaving. Then we decided to make the best of it and everything shifted. People go on vacation to escape chores and have the opportunity to have nothing to do but play. We never cooked or cleaned or ran errands. We went to the beach at the river every day. We played with the kids, ate ice cream, went out to dinner. Everyone had fun. Jack and I rode our bikes 3 miles into town every day. We watched the 4th of July parade and the fireworks. We decided to go on vacation every year at this time.

Ryan's parents joined us for a few of the evenings we were in Sandpoint. They hung out with us at the lodge. Ryan's dad took some fun photos.

Ryan and kids standing in front of boat that fascinated Jack. The boat had 2 1200 horse power engines. Ryan's dad estimated its cost around 300K. Fancy.

the lodge -- we watched the fireworks from this dock

Ryan rode his bike the first 60 miles of the way home. He is training for the Seattle-to-Portland ride. The kids and I stopped at Albeni Dam. We took a tour but were allowed no pictures (they are managed by the Army Corps of Engineers). I snapped this one before the tour.

Our last stop was Cle Elum. We met friends for dinner at their parents' vacation home. The kids ran freely. Jack rode his bike on the dirt roads, and they played. We've been listening to Harry Potter while driving so the kids look forward to that part of the trip too. They finally fell asleep around 10 as they are now on summer time.

The Homework Myth

This year, Jack has had a homework packet every week. It contains 10-14 worksheets that duplicate the work he does in the classroom. I tried to inspire him to do it at the beginning of the year but he was very resistant. Ryan got so desperate he bribed him with screen time and I said, 'no way' to that even though Jack was very interested in the trade. So, I stopped bugging Jack about it and he doesn't do it.

His teacher does not love this and told me next year there may be consequences for not doing the homework. I have been preparing for a fight .. in the form of a discussion of course .. with the 1st grade teacher and principal next year. I read Alfie Kohn's book, The Homework Myth. He analyzes all the research around homework in the elementary grades which proved that doing more school work at home does not improve school performance or character (self-discipline, wisdom through suffering or whatever other reason adults believe the value of homework to be).

Fortunately for me, I learned recently that I am not the only parent whose child doesn't do the homework. The other mom is an ivy-league educated UW law professor (score!).  She feels passionately (and she is as articulate and intense as you suspect) that the homework our kindergartners are given is a waste of time. The kids are little and doing fine and even if they weren't, this homework would not help.  She said that we can unite next year against any punitive measures the first grade teachers may consider.

I feel like I won the rebel parent lottery.

On wheels

While I am trying to always accept my children for who they are, I admit that I insist they learn to ride a bike and like it (dammit). I push cycling like Joe Montana probably pushed football. Sonia will not ride the scoot bike that Jack loved but she is into the scooter so we go with that. Today we are having summertime weather so we went to South lake Union around MOHAI to ride. I'd like to say that glorious fun was had by all. It was not. Sonia complained most of the time which is her MO these days. Jack had fun though.

The butterfly song

Sonia sings the butterfly song for her teachers -- Jenny and Heather

San Francisco

We spent our spring break in beautiful, sunny! San Francisco. We planned the trip because Ryan had some extra travel credits from work .. sadly, those fell through after all the plans were made. That dampened my enthusiasm for the trip quite a bit and perhaps that lowered my expectations. It was sunny every day we were there which made the trip worth it regardless of the activities. I learned SF is a great city for kids. We visited Golden Gate Park -- home of the lovely Koret's Children's Quarter and the California Academy of Science. We could have spent days in each of these places.  We purchased a CityPass (highly recommended) so we had tickets to 4 museums and the buses and cable cars for a week. We took a cruise on the Bay, visited the aquarium, hiked up to Coit Tower, around Lombard street and hung out at Aquatic park on by Ghiredelli square. We explored the newly rebuilt Exploratorium. We visited Yerba Buena Gardens where there is a great playground and the Children's Creativity Museum.

My mom visited for 4 days which made our outings a little more special.  We ate some great food -- gelato at Naia's, pizza at Tony's, italian at Vicotello's (all in North Beach where we stayed). One of the great parts of the trip is that the kids were great.  Jack, especially, walked everywhere. When we went to Vicotello's, there was no kids menu. Both kids ate the relatively taste-complicated food they were served.  They are good travelers. They rarely complained and were always up for our daily adventures. It makes me want to travel more.

Golden Gate Park Conservatory

Watching the fish at the very diverse California Academy of Science

Paddling on Stowe Lake / Golden Gate Park

Koret's children's playground / Golden Gate Park

View from Coit Tower

Blowing bubbles at the Exploratorium

Yerba Buena Gardens / best shot of many

Happy Easter!

All special occasions are more fun with kids. I know I've mentioned I'd stopped paying attention to Halloween, Easter, even Christmas.. Now we are celebrating. As a result, I've come to understand why these traditions are important.. why we celebrate. People come together and share the experience. It's lovely.  I've been waffling about the Easter bunny. I am getting tired of lying to them. They ask so many questions so there is always a series of lies. Jack asked yesterday what the tooth fairy does with all the teeth. Indeed.

As the kids get older, they are more fun to hang out with -- Yesterday we headed to a park in this amazing spring weather we are having. We found a lemonade stand. They were so excited and so were the kids selling lemonade. Notice the stand is made from an old sandbox.

When I took this picture I was thinking that I couldn't believe what Jack was doing. He used to be a little lump of a baby and now he can lead the class in their lesson about the calendar. We were admitted to a private school, btw... a lovely private school .. they are all lovely. They included the bill with the letter of admission -- $17,600. Jack is happier at his school now. I am haunted by the fact that he could have a better experience in a classroom with fewer kids. It may become necessary but he is going to have to stop learning before we make the considerable effort necessary to afford private elementary school.

He has also been attending an after school Lego class at his request. After his first day, I walked in a he'd built nothing. He is easily distracted and I wondered if the environment was too loud for him. I was wrong though. As time passed, he builds bigger and more complicated structures. He likes the class and is proud of his creations.

Last weekend, my dear friend Heather invited us to her family's cabin on Camano Island. We all had a blast. Her nephews were there too so the kids had someone to play with and the adults could relax a bit. This is the part about having older kids that is fun. They are starting to enjoy their freedom but not so much that they don't want to be with us from time to time. Sonia spent most of the weekend bothering Heather's older nephew Archer. Archer's personality is the opposite of Jack -- very alpha. He and Jack got along well and had fun. He and Sonia fought a lot mainly because Sonia seemed to sense his need to be the boss and picked on him. Long term, this is not great behavior but I imagine she'll figure that out.

Dinos and sun

Jack and Ryan took a woodworking class together. They made a T-Rex:

Sonia and I spent some time in our neighbor's hammock in the sun.. heaven!

Jack Teavee

We love listening to audiobooks. We have listened to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at least ten times. Occasionally, Jack will ask me why I don't like videogames or why I won't let him have screen time every day.  I generally try to recite the oompa loompa song sung after Mike Teavee gets sucked into the television and turned into a two inch tall boy. Here's the first part of the song. Jack gets it as he trusts that Willy Wonka is a wise man.

"The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set–
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all the shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink–
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK–HE ONLY SEES!
'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY...USED...TO...READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!

No Pressure

Friends of ours are going to have their first baby this summer. They are highly educated, planning types. I was at their house recently and they have a copy of my favorite sleep book, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. I haven't looked at the book in years and the new copy is much thicker than I remember. As I looked at the book, I didn't see how it could be helpful before the baby arrived so I was perusing some of the chapters.

In the introduction, I found this in a box in bold text:

IF YOUR CHILD DOES NOT LEARN TO SLEEP WELL, HE MAY BECOME AN INCURABLE ADULT INSOMNIAC, CHRONICALLY DISABLED FROM SLEEPINESS AND DEPENDENT ON SLEEPING PILLS.

It wasn't an ALL CAPS but it might as well have been.

I often wonder why I put so much pressure on myself to make the "right' decisions regarding my children. It's not an illusion that there is a lot of pressure "out there." I read this book, and I do not remember this passage because I am sure I took it seriously. Now I think, whatever. Sure, in extreme cases, this may be true but doubtful. If you're reading that book, you are likely doing the best you can and whatever you feel is in the best interest of your child.

So much of this pressure I feel is simply from people trying to sell me their expertise. Now, if I can just ignore them.

DIY

Recently, Sonia has started to dress herself. She wears the same outfit every day. I think of it as a uniform to keep myself from saying anything. My friend Heather bought her the outfit: grey stretch pants, a purple ruffled skirt, and a matching shirt with a ballerina on it.  She has also been accessorizing on occasion...

She also cut her own hair yesterday. Now she has bangs

She has started putting her head in the water during swimming lessons.

Jack and our neighbor are building their own army base behind our house.

This Ted talk is titled the Demise of Guys. I watch these because of Jack. The topic of the talk is how boys' minds are being re-wired by screens especially video games and porn. The speaker admits he has no answers and is just here to alarm us. Works every time with me. I am really concerned because Jack is drawn to screens like a moth to flame. Yesterday we went to a birthday party at a trampoline place. While all the boys were jumping and playing air hockey, Jack sat in front of the video games pretending to play. When I asked him why he said he couldn't help it. The videogames kept "calling him to come back."

I want to move to the remote jungles of the amazon.

Fun in the sun and snow

After a few weeks of illness in December, we've had a fun January. The highlight was going to the southwest for a week. Ryan and I spent 3 DAYS in a beautiful mid-century modern home celebrating my dear friend Heather's 40th. I love 40. So much fun around this birthday. The kids were with their grandparents who were completely spent after three days. I understand the feeling. When I returned to my normal life, I felt a bit punished by it. It's not always easy to have two little people making demands on you during all their waking minutes. Parenting is a lot more than that obviously but the day-to-day of it can be a shock to the system after a break.

Poolside

hike in a canyon

my dear college friends

Sonia at the pool

 During my visit to AZ, I also watched my nephew for a day and night. He is so darn cute. 9 months old and a fierce ball of energy.  A few months ago friends of ours came to dinner at our home with their newborn. They were exhausted. They commented that they bet I was happy now that the newborn sleepless part of my life was over. I told them I wasn't really.  I felt a little sad about it.  The great news is that after watching my nephew for the night, I no longer feel that way. He woke up every few hours -- probably because he was in an odd place with an odd person. I felt awful the next day but slept very well the following night. Thank god.

Sonia and Beaux

A few days after returning, we took the kids to Meany Lodge near the Snoqualmie Summit. It's a lodge owned by the Mountaineers.  It's pretty unique -- the sleeping is dorm style and everyone pitches in to cook and clean. They have their own mountain and rope tow.  You can't drive to the lodge, you have to take a snow cat. The coolest thing was watching the snow cat tow about 40 skiers behind it on the way back to the parking lot.  We continue to try to teach the kids to ski and we did lots of sledding. Jack is open to skiing.. Sonia not really. We hope to go back to Meany soon.

the snow cat

sledding

skiing with leashes

Christmas

We had our first Christmas in our new house --our first decorated tree (my first in my adult life) and the first time our kids were excited to the point of anxiety (mostly jack). In spite of staying up late the night before, he woke up at 530am.

The kids enjoyed their gifts and played with them until the afternoon. Ryan spent the day assembling the star wars toys he had purchased for jack that seemed more for him. Ryan and I had agreed the kids would get three gifts : one from Santa, one from grandparents and one from us. Then ryan went shopping for jack and bought him 5 things ( all star wars).

We went to our neighbors for dinner. We all had a great time.

After all the revelry, I made a few decisions. The Santa myth is not working for me. Each year I have to tell more complex lies to answer more complex questions. Also this means we have to wake up Christmas morning to open gifts and sentences me to many more years of 530 am wakeup. I've decided to out Santa next year. We can open gifts on Christmas Eve and I don't have to lie anymore.

After Christmas our vacation time went a bit south. Sonia got the stomach flu, then ryan got some strange but different bug. We were supposed to go to a family friendly ski lodge Saturday. We spent the day preparing then packed up our neighbor's 4 wheel drive car. We set off then made a quick stop. When we got back into the car it wouldn't start. We tried to go the following day but that didn't work either. We ended up at snoqualmie since I had already rented skis. The kids had fun. We hope to return to the lodge when the stars are aligned in our favor

Then I got sick and now Jack is sick. We're rolling with it. For the first time in years, we actually had plans for new year's eve. We had to cancel and the kids and Ryan are watching the Phantom menace. Still, its been fun not to have a routine. We really enjoyed the lights, music and fun around the season. Its fun to experience again with the kids.

I am writing this post on my new nexus tablet ( a gift from Ryan's generous employer). I can't figure out how to embed the images within the text. The last picture is a trip the kids and I took to the cedar river watershed after Christmas. We took a lovely walk along the river. Lately they have both been really resistant to my idea of fun. I had to force them to go on the walk but they had a good time once they got over their resistance.

Hello World

Have I ever titled a post 'Hello World?' It's mainly because I don't know what to say right now. For the last several days every parent I know has spent a good part of their time crying, signing online petitions,  and hoping and praying this never happens to their children.  I've tried not to think about it. My thinking about it doesn't ease anyone's suffering. But there has been a persistent ache in my solar plexus. My thoughts are dark -- such as If that were my son, I'd want to be dead -- so that helped me with one part of the twisted puzzle. I've also decided I must make gun issues a litmus test in the same way I've made abortion rights a litmus test for voting. I need to send my money and energy to gun control with the same fervor.

Many parents agreed they were really lenient this weekend.. just grateful their own children are safe. We danced to no music in front of our festive Christmas decorations.

Giving Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving!


Last week, we celebrated Jack's 6th birthday. 6 years. It seems like a lifetime and like a week. Time is an odd thing. The birth of my first child was such an enormous transition that it is hard to imagine what my life was before.. in a way, that time just feels like part of my imagination .. something that possibly never happened. My children have become so much a part of who I am today.

The first thing Jack said to us on his birthday was to ask if he had grown taller now that he was 6. We said he probably had. He is still the size of an average 4 year old but he is certainly growing. We celebrated with 5 of his buddies. We flew remote control helicopters, ate mac n cheese per Jack's request and then ate a double layer chocolate cake that I had made. It was the first cake I'd make from scratch and you could tell. It wasn't pretty but it tasted good.

Later that day, Lily, her parents and our dear friend Heather came over for pizza delivered by the pizza man then s'mores for dessert. A dream diet by Jack's standards. He had fun and so did we.

 The old days .. at 3 and 4 months:

Last week:

In some Sonia news.. the other day I put Sonia down for a nap. It often takes her a while to sleep and she knows how to entertain herself in her room before sleeping. The other day I walked in to check on her. She had a bunch of strips of construction paper in her room and she had made them into different shapes. Oh the Virgos!