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fun in fours

Month: August 2013

Morning Memories

Monday 12 August 2013

Of our two children, the Boy, perhaps not surprisingly, is always the first to wake. His usual time, left to himself, is around 7:00. If we’re lucky on the weekend, he might sleep until a little closer to eight, but he also likes to get up around five just for a change. Still, no matter what, he wakes earlier than L nine times out of ten. And so we do the logical thing: we change his diaper, dress him,  and take him into the Girl’s room and ploop him beside her.

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His reaction is now always the same: he looks for L’s nighttime sippy cup. He’s begun using a sippy cup — adorned with illustrations from Cars — and he likes to help himself to L’s princess sippy cup.

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Eventually the Girl wakes up, usually quite glad to see the Boy. The giggles, tickling, and general silliness begin, and so everyone starts the day with a smile.

A perfect start to the day.

Another Cheat

Sunday 11 August 2013

Illness stinks; prolonged illness even more so.

Leon Chwistek

Saturday 10 August 2013

W całej Warszawie nie ma tylu osób inteligentnych, ile ich przychodzi do jednej krakowskiej kawiarni.

Sittin’ on the Steps

Saturday 10 August 2013

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The Boy has found a seat that's almost just his size.

Eating Yogurt

Friday 09 August 2013

The Boy enjoying his late-morning yogurt until it runs out...

Communism and Food

Friday 09 August 2013

"Communism did to the national cuisine what it did to so much else and reduced it to the lowest common denominator: uniform and bland stodge characterised by poor ingredients, low standards and low expectations."

What Communism Did to Polish Food

Corn!

Thursday 08 August 2013

L is such a picky eater. She’s a first child: we really didn’t know what we were doing. We followed this book’s advice tempered with that person’s wisdom and those mothers’ experience. We’re doing things a bit differently with E. He eats what we eat, and he has from the moment we could give him solid food. As a result, he’s not a picky eater.

There are a few culinary preferences that the Boy and L have in common, though, and one of them is corn on the cob.

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L hummed and purred as she ate, working it back and forth like a typewriter paper carriage. The Boy makes use of a variety of methods: the double-handed high hold, the single-handed nibble-from-the-end, the single-handed reverse grip flute position (the right hand would be gripping a flute from the top, not the bottom), and variants of them all.

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Occasionally, something not-quite-right hits him, and he balls up his fist and his face into what looks like a mysterious sourness.

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But he gets over it, takes a new grip, and continues.

Spaghetti!

Wednesday 07 August 2013

Every parent has this picture. I know that somewhere, in an album packed away in a box somewhere in my folks’ condo, there is a picture of me eating spaghetti.

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What is it about spaghetti that it’s an almost-universally favorite food among toddlers?

Chainsaw

Wednesday 07 August 2013

I hear a chainsaw somewhere in the distance in our neighborhood, and I think, "That's a sound I usually associate with Babcia's small village." Then I realize it's just the Boy making his car sounds downstairs.