Note to the Little Man: If you're really serious about falling asleep easily, there are a number of things you have to do. Many of them don't impact you: lower stress, get some exercise, eat well, etc. However, there is one basic step you could do that would dramatic increase your chances of falling asleep quickly: stop moving around!!!
Crackers and Blocks
Having a one-year-old means finding a plastic block at the bottom of the animal crackers' box...
Fitting the Pieces
Dear E,
I wish I could tell you that life is like the puzzle you struggled with today, that there are a few missing parts and with a little trial and error, you can figure out where they fit. Life is a puzzle, but it's more like the puzzle "Dalmatains," with a mass of similarly patterened pieces that seem almost impossibly random.
You'll struggle at times to make the slightest bit of progress, only to find yourself wondering if perhaps you didn't force a piece here or there after all. "Maybe they don't fit quite that snuggly," you'll say to yourself as you plod off to bed one night.
But rest assured, there is a bigger picture, it is accessible (if not difficult), and it is beautiful.
Your Dad
Leaving
One thing I dislike about the Catholic church: you get a really good priest in your parish, one who gives thought-provoking homilies and is a fantastic confessor, and then the diocese transfers him...
Saturday at the Pool
Our first day at the pool this year as a family, but alas, the Boy, still recovering from some upper respitory infection, cannot get into the water.
Instead, he stays with Nana and Papa, forever pointing to the pool, forever needing distracting. It's so unfair, so inexplicable: everyone else takes turns in the water, and the poor Boy is stuck.
For the Girl, it's a continuation from last year: more development, more courage -- diving, diving, forever diving. With a new set of flippers, she's able to get deeper faster.
"But Tata, it hurts my ears to go that deep."
She also adds a new trick or two, like diving into the water through the ring.
"Perhaps I could try that," I suggest.
"I've got to get the camera for that," K replies.
"I didn't think you'd make it," she replies with a smile.
Views from the Pool
Lipnica Sunset
Theme Changes
Switched to the new Twenty-Thirteen default theme. Not sure I like it, but with the various post-types, it makes me think of content in a new way, as a potential design element, and I like that fresh thinking.
Peep
L’s favorite cartoon of late, Peep and the Big Wide World. I have to say, I enjoy it too: simple animation that focuses on the story, with real-life applications afterward.
Watching Cartoons Together
Monopolies
"Daddy, will you play with me?" It's a common refrain from the Girl when we're home alone, just the three of us, and the Boy is down for his nap. And lately, the answer to my question "What would you like to play?" is itself a question: "Can we play a board game?"
It's an opportunity to see how much the Girl has really matured in the last year. We play Sorry; she loses -- no tears. We play Monopoly Junior; she wins -- no hysterics.
I find my own attitudes towards these games are vastly different, though. Sorry depends a great deal on chance, but there's a bit of strategy involved. You draw a seven and you have to think of how best to split those seven moves between two pawns. You draw a "Sorry!" card and you have to determine which is the best piece of your opponent to replace, and it has to be a balance between what helps you the most and what hurts your opponent the most.
Monolopy Junior, though, is pure chance. Roll the dice; move the piece; buy the property (which in Junior involves merely buying a ticket booth -- looks like a regular Monolopy house -- and putting it on the square) or pay the owner. Mixed among the typical Chance cards are cards that allow a player to get a free ticket booth, which can entitle the player in some instances to confiscate the opponent's existing booth. It's a frustratingly random game, and I often find myself relieved as I start hemorrhaging money and the end approaches.
Yet boring as it is for me, I play with the Girl whenever she asks. As a husband and father, I no longer have a monopoly on my own time or interests.
Here [They] Come
walkin' down the street...
Such a difference in how L plays here in the States versus Babcia's place in Polska. With all the houses tightly packed in Babcia's neighborhood, I could easily hear L just about anywhere she was. She'd developed a few little haunts, but they were all within earshot of the house. Here, I watch her as she walks up the street to her friend's house, and his parents do the same when they return. It's a busier street to begin with, but there's also the eternal fear that sparks the almost cliche instructions, "Don't talk to strangers." In Polska, there were times that I didn't really know where L was, but I wasn't really worried about it. It's not that there aren't evil people in Polska, they just seem fewer and farther between. You don't read news accounts of abductions and murders like you do here.
And so L and S would often strike out on their own, yelling to one of us on their way out where they were headed.
Mistakes
“Tata, will you fix this for me?” She has in her hand two walkie-talkies that she got for Christmas or a birthday. “I think the battery is dead.”
“Will you fix this?” Words that at the time warm and terrify. It’s my job, in a way, this “fixing.” Most fixing is nothing more than re-stringing a toy guitar or gluing a broken bit of plastic. But it’s fixing, and that makes me a bit of a hero to L. Yet I can’t fix everything for her all the time. She will have to learn to fix things for herself.
“No, but I’ll help you.” She hands me the walkie-talkie. “You’ll have to open this. Do you know what you’ll use?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“Śrubokręt.”
“And what’s that in English?”
“I don’t know.”
We head to the basement, and I show her the screwdrivers, teaching her the word in English.
“Which one do you think you’ll use?” She looks at the screw and points to a Phillips screwdriver.
“What’s this called?” I tell her. “And this one?” she continues, indicating a small straight slot screwdriver. I tell her.
Through a short bit of trial-and-error experimentation, we find the appropriate screwdriver and open the battery compartment to find a nine-volt battery. I show her how to pop off the connectors, then replace them so she can do it.
“I’ll go check to see if we have this type of battery,” she informs me, returning with two AA batteries.
“We don’t have this type of battery, but maybe these will work.”
Of course they won’t. Only throught some very serious scheming could we get this to work. There’s simply no easy way, perhaps — I don’t know much about batteries and electronics — no way at all.
Still, it’s better for her to figure it out on her own.
She squeezes, pushes, grunts — it’s no use.
“Maybe when we go to the store today, we can get one of these batteries,” she finally concludes, as does the lesson.
Charleston Corners
Sorting
There are a ton of pictures to go through -- close to 500. How? K and I both get carried away sometimes.
And so after the kids are in bed, the first load of laundry done, and a bit of cleaning and sorting completed, K goes to bed and I start going through the weekend's pictures, many of which I should have posted Friday evening.
Dozens upon dozens of pictures from the beach. The Boy walking toward the water; the Boy walking away.
The Girl playing in the sand; the Girl playing in the water.
But once again, it's late, and my cognitive abilities/willingness are setting like Friday's sun, though not as gloriously.
The upshot -- plenty of material for the next few days.