matching tracksuits

fun in threes, sometimes fours

Mikołaj 2020

Sunday 06 December 2020

This morning, Elfie made his first appearance:

I was a little curious about E's reaction this year: at the end of last year, he figured it out. "You guys just put Elfie out there, don't you?"

"What makes you think that?"

And then he discovered where I'd hidden him the week after he disappeared last Christmas season.

"See! You did it!"

But this year, his class is doing Elf on the Shelf, so he either pretended to forget about it because of that, or he actually did forget about his conjectures last year.

Tonight, Elfie decided to do a little web browsing while he had the opportunity.

Previous Years

The Elf
Mikołaj 2016
Mikołaj’s Arrival
Forwarding Address

The Tree

Saturday 05 December 2020

Cleaning

Friday 04 December 2020

It’s that time of year — spring Christmas cleaning.

I’ve written before about K and the level of Christmas cleaning she requires:

The Dirty Stairs

The window is not dirty; it’s fogged from the gas in between the two panes doing something funky.

That required level of cleanliness now drives the Girl mad. “Why are madre’s standards so high?” (She’s been calling us madre and padre for about a year now. Why? Because.)

“Because they are.” We try to reassure her that it’s good practice for “real life.” “You might get a boss with impossibly high standards. You’ll be used to it.”

I don’t know if she buys it.

Critical Santa

Thursday 03 December 2020

During dinner tonight, the topic of Santa came up. "I don't believe in Santa Claus," the Boy said confidently, "but I believe in Saint Nicholas." I thought he might be thinking of the Polish version of Santa, Mikolaj, who comes on December sixth, or perhaps just he was just thinking of the actual Saint Nicholas of the Catholic church -- you know, the bishop from Turkey.

"I knew this time was coming," I thought. I've always felt a ting of guilt about the whole Santa thing: I knew perfectly well that Santa doesn't exist, but I kept playing along, telling our kids that Santa does exist. Eventually they figure it out, but it just left a bad taste in my mouth.

Soon, though, he kind of back-tracked: "Well, I'm not sure."

"What evidence do you have that Santa exists?" I asked him.

"What kind of evidence do you have that Santa doesn't exist," L jumped in like a typical thirteen-year-old who just wants to be contrary. (Is it only thirteen-year-olds that are like that?)

"No, sweetheart. Whenever people are making a claim, the burden of proof is on them. They have to provide evidence, not the skeptics who doubt the story," I clarified. I thought about going into what it means to beg the question, but I didn't, turning instead back to the Boy: "So what evidence do we have?"

He listed the toys, the imagery in movies, the stories.

"Can we explain those things with other methods? Is there a simpler way to explain the toys appearing under the Christmas tree?" Did I tell him we were applying Occam's Razor? Certainly not. But we were shaving away.

"Well, you and Mom could put the toys under the tree," he responded after some thought.

In the end, though, when pressed, he decided that he leaned toward a belief in Santa.

We'll see how he views it next year.

Treble Clef

Wednesday 02 December 2020

Today the Boy had music for his related art class in school. They're working on the treble clef.

"I took the after-lesson quiz," he explained, "and I got 3 out of 20 right! I took it again and only got 4 out of 20 correct!" His frustration was mounting to the level I'm sure it achieved when he was struggling with the material in class.

Checking school lunch. "Daddy, this is what I'm having tomorrow! It's delicious!"

After dinner, I printed out the old methods of memorizing the treble clef: "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge" and "FACE."

We went through his work together, and he made a perfect score. "That was easy," he decided.

He noticed, though, that there are two D notes on the treble clef: one just beside middle C, and one almost up at the top of the clef.

"Two Ds?!"

So we went to the piano and started poking around. We talked about the patterns of the black keys and used that as a way to show which keys corresponded to which note.

"This is D," I said. "See how it's between the two black keys? Now show me another D."

Advent 2020 Begins

Tuesday 01 December 2020

Today is the first day for the Advent calendars K has kept under wraps in the basement. L made sure to label hers to ensure the integrity of her 24-treat treasure, only to find that the first treat had an almond in the center of it.

"I can't eat almonds," she sighed.

Don't worry -- someone took care of it.

Testing, Again

Monday 30 November 2020

I guess it could be worse. Shoot, it was worse just a few years ago. We had MAP testing and Iowa Basic Skills testing and some other test that I can’t remember, all piled up in the first half of the year, with the MAP test repeated in the spring along with state-mandated testing. Now we’ve lost the MAP testing (the only really useful test for me) and the Iowa Basic Skills (Is that what it was called? I could look it up, but I don’t care enough about it to check), but in their place, we have district-mandated benchmark testing every quarter and two practice TDA tests.

What is a TDA test, you might ask? Text Dependent Analysis. An essay question based on a text, in other words. That’s how we spent today, working on this essay question:

“Inventor Martha Coston” focuses on Martha Coston’s night signal invention. The author claims that it was Coston’s “desire to provide for her family and her determination to succeed [that] made the Coston night signals a great success.” Write an essay analyzing how the author develops and supports the claim. Use evidence from the text to support your response.

If you read that carefully, you’ll see that it’s really just asking students to summarize the argument in the piece. Today, I helped students see that; I’ll do the same tomorrow, as I have to do this in person, and we’re only meeting a given student every other day. Is that teaching to the test? Or rather teaching the test? I don’t know. I don’t care. But I wasn’t about to just toss the test at them and say, “Here, do this.” And I was also not about to let the know, through implication, that I really didn’t want to spend time with this test. “Now, as you look at this district-mandated test…” “If you look at the prompt for the district-mandated test…” “Do you have any questions about the district-mandated test?”

Trying Coffee

Sunday 29 November 2020

The Boy is often eager to try new things.

Today, he tried a sip from my coffee.

It wasn't a hit.

Forbidden Island

Saturday 28 November 2020

Out of the blue this evening, the kids decided they wanted to play Forbidden Island. At least that’s how I understood it by the time they made it down to the livingroom with the game. I’d wager it was more L’s initiative than the Boy’s, but they were both excited about it when they came down.

I was less excited. About playing the game, that is. I don’t understand the game. It just seems to be a bunch of randomness pawned off as a prize-winning game. “How many drugs did they do before coming up with the arbitrary rules that make up that game?” I laughed with K once the Boy was in bed and the Girl had retreated to her friends on Facetime.

But none of that really mattered — here we were spending time together without any fussing, without any arguments. The kids are at a tough age: E is young enough to derive joy from irritating people and the Girl is not quite old enough to be patient with it all. These moments, while increasing in frequency as the kids grow up, still feel relatively rare some days. So we make the most of them when they are here.

Family Game

The Day After

Friday 27 November 2020

“Friday, it’s going to be beautiful — warm, sunny, inviting,” K proclaimed earlier this week. “We are going on either a hike or a bike ride.” We headed to Dupont State Forest, which has 40 miles of cycling trails. Off-road trails. I currently have 25mm tires on my bike for commuting (ask me how many times I’ve ridden this year…), which can make any offroading a bit of a challenge, to say the least. What I’ve found is that it’s not a problem going uphill: I can power through most things, and the tires are not that slick (even though they would appear to be so), so keeping up is not a problem. Going downhill is a different story, though. Our nearly-fourteen-year-old leaves K and me behind; our eight-year-old does the same.

I blame it on the tires.