matching tracksuits

Snowless Snow Day

Monday 08 January 2018

We haven't really tried to force the Girl, as she gets older, to learn how to cook. She's learned how to clean her room, to dust, to wash a window, to clean the hardwood floors in our house, but cooking, we just didn't really make her. I don't know about K, but I figured that she'll learn when she's interested. That's how it was with me. Still, as she nears middle school, we've been talking about how, at the very least, she needs to begin making her own lunch for the day.

This weekend, she decided she wanted to make chocolate chip muffins. She didn't want help other than buying the ingredients and going over the recipe with her. The rest, she wanted to do. So when we went to bed last night, it was with the plan of making muffins in the afternoon after school.

Little did we know that school had already been canceled in anticipation of a front that was supposed to bring ice and freezing rain but never really materialized. We woke up, went through our normal morning routine, and somehow, though the local news was on, missed that Greenville County Schools had canceled everything for the day. We found out when L and I arrived at her school only to find an empty parking lot. "It can't be a two-hour delay," I thought, "because there would be some cars there. Someone would be there." We returned home to find that there was no school, so afternoon muffins became morning muffins.

She began cooking, and I, still not feeling 100%, took the opportunity to lie down for a while. I went to the kitchen occasionally to check on the progress, but overall, she seemed to be doing well, with a little help from the Boy. His help with her was much like his help with anyone: only slightly helpful, often less than helpful, but always eager.

L called me in to help her when she was filling the muffin forms. I looked at the dough and had my doubts.

"Did you follow the instructions very closely?" I asked.

"Yes," she assured.

"And you mixed this very well?" I asked, wondering how she could have done it without using the mixer. It was thick and not easily budged: it would have been a nightmare to do it by hand.

"Yes."

I took a spatula and found most of the sugar and a good bit of the flour still sitting at the base of the mixing bowl, untouched.

"Oh," she laughed.

We threw it in the mixer, combined the ingredients thoroughly, and got put everything in the muffin forms.

"Now put it in the oven," I said.

"Me?!"

The Girl doesn't deal with heat well. Things that seem only lukewarm to K and me threaten to scald her, to send her to the emergency room with third-degree burns. But with a little encouragement, she was able to open the door, put the pan in, and pull it back out in twenty minutes when the buzzer went off.

And the result? For a first attempt, utterly amazing. For any attempt, really very good. Moist, chocolatey, and perfect. A hit for the whole family.

The upshot of this: the Girl was eager to cook again. When it was dinner time, she wanted to learn to make the rice. Instead of just plain old rice, though, I taught her to cook a quick and easy risotto. After looking through a cookbook and finding a recipe for lemony broiled chicken, she's ready to cook a full dinner next week.

And the rain and ice that shut down schools? Nothing. The ground was dry until early afternoon. A district spokeswoman explained it to a local news outlet:

"When an alert of that magnitude is issued we have to consider the problems it would present not only for our bus riders, but also car riders, including high school drivers, who travel over bridges and on curvy roads," Brotherton said. "We considered the circumstances that occurred in Asheville on December 31st when even small amounts of fog and drizzle quickly turned to ice on roadways and led to treacherous road conditions and multiple wrecks. After a week of freezing temperatures and already cold roads, asking parents, students and employees to travel in the predicted conditions was not a risk we were willing to take. Safety always comes first."

It's not the first time something like this has happened; it won't be the last. But we'll always make the most of such days.

Counting Costs

Sunday 07 January 2018

How much does it cost to have a puppy? There are the upfront costs -- the puppy itself, shots, sterilization, etc. There are the hidden costs -- a new fence, multiple harnesses to find the right one, etc. Then there are the destructive costs -- shoes chewed, furniture chewed, etc. We've been lucky in the latter, perhaps because we've been unlucky in the former two. We've managed to keep Clover from destroying much of anything of value. She's learned more or less to ignore shoes. More or less. She went through a gnawing on furniture legs phase, but that seems to have passed as well. However, there's a chair in the living room that she enjoys chewing the bottom of, which probably won't make it through her puppyhood.

So I guess we should be thankful...

(A random thought to keep my post-every-day-for-a-month goal going even though I'm not 100% and slept most of the day...)

Memory

Saturday 06 January 2018

The Boy gets on a kick and stays on it for some time. For the last few weeks, it's been Go Fish. Now it seems to be shifting to Memory.

We have an animal-themed version we brought back from Poland, and it has a ridiculous number of pairs. I haven't counted them, but I'd say it's close to forty. I can say this because we were organizing them for a morning game and E wanted more than the fifteen pairs we played with yesterday. I pulled out twenty pairs and there seemed to be just as many still in the stack.

"Why can't we play with all of them?"

I thought of how playing with fifteen went. It was a surreal experience. I wasn't really trying to remember anything, to be honest; I was turning up cards, letting the Boy see them, then turning them back over. But somehow, as if by instinct, I was turning over cards to make pairs. It's not that I didn't want the pairs; it's not that I was trying to let the Boy win. I just wasn't putting forth much effort myself, or so I thought.

We compromised on twenty, but it was a bit overwhelming for the Boy: after several minutes, he'd only found one pair, and I'd found two.

Hard and Soft

Friday 05 January 2018

We were at Nana's and Papa's this afternoon, and I asked the Boy who he wanted to ride back with.

"Mama!"

"That's right -- no one loves Tata!" I laughed.

Later in the evening, as the Boy was nestling into his covers for the night and I lay beside him, he stroked my cheek and said, "Daddy, you're the best daddy. And I always love you no matter who I ride home with."

Final game of Memory before bed -- just after the snack

He paused for a moment, then added, "It's just that Mommy is soft, and you're a hard chunk."

Scientific Go Fish

Thursday 04 January 2018

The Go Fish obsession continues. Someone plays with the kids every night, and they occasionally play together by themselves. We've yet to tackle a four-player game, though I'm not sure why. The kids don't seem to eager for whatever reason, and so perhaps that's why we haven't tried.

Tonight, as I was playing with them, I stood to get something from the other side of the room, and I accidentally glanced at the Boy's cards. (He has them spread out in a chair beside him, so the natural gesture to avoid seeing someone's cards -- looking down when passing -- doesn't work.) I did notice that he had a yo-yo (we play with a picture-based card set), and since I had a yo-yo, I thought I'd do a little experiment.

"L, do you have a yo-yo?" I asked during my next turn. E was set to go next, and I was ready for him to ask me if I had a yo-yo. He had been a little distracted, though, and asked instead, "L, do you have a yo-yo?"

L looked at me; I smiled back at her.

"E, I just asked her that," I laughed. "You should have asked me that just then. Now, I'm going to ask you for it next turn."

He just smiled.

In Praise of Return

Wednesday 03 January 2018

Coming back to school can be a relief for many of our students. They come from less than stable home lives, and the predictability of school is a comfort for them. These are often the kids that most often exhibit problematic behavior. Our principal sent us all an email to this effect. It read, in part, "Many of our students have experienced unrest over the break. Without their normal routines, meals, and social interactions found at school, they may need a readjustment period (and your grace) when returning."

One of the things I'd decided to change in my class was to provide a mechanism for regular praise of students, both individual and group. The individual is easier: it's just one person praising another. The group praise, though -- lots of kids focusing on the good actions of one student. That was a tough one.

In developing the lesson, I thought we should spend some time writing and thinking about praise, so I prepared a Pear Deck for the kids (which allows them to respond to given prompts and see their and others' responses projected anonymously. It's a great way to have a real-time anonymous discussion), asking questions about when they were last praised, how it felt, when they last praised someone else, how that felt.

Some of the answers were telling, echoing the ideas in the principal's email.

I asked students when they last remembered being praised. One student's response was memorable:

The last time I remember being praise was when I manage to talk to people because I can't really socialize with people. Another time I was praised was when I was working on something for a story and the person read it, and they said it was an amazing idea!

This young lady is one of the best students I've ever had: hard-working, kind, very intelligent, but painfully shy.

When I asked "How does it feel when you're praised," some of the answers really stood out:

It made me feel special and proud of my work that I have done. I barely get noticed on things so it like amazing to be praised.
I felt nothing because I didn't care.

Finally, I asked students to consider why praise might be important, given all the responses they'd given and read. One showed that at least one student understand how much impact something positive can have: "For example, it could be one compliment that could save someone's life...... They could be depressed and just needed someone to be nice to them and show them that people care about them."

Contrast this awareness with how students so often treat each other, with insults and snide comments that are meant to build themselves up by tearing others down. I wonder if anyone else saw the irony. Smart kids -- I'm sure they did.

Last Day of Break

Tuesday 02 January 2018

"Daddy, I don't understand. On Sid the Science Kid, the teacher calls all of the children scientists." The Boy paused for a moment: he's learned how to pause to heighten the moment just a bit. "That can't be right! They can't be scientists!"

We were on our way home from shopping, leaving the girls at home this last day of break. K stayed home because of a lingering illness, so we were together for the morning, but the Boy and I headed out after lunch to do the week's grocery shopping.

"Why can't they be scientists?" I asked, wondering what he had in mind.

"They're just kids!"

"So?"

"To be a scientist, you have to have a job. That's your job. A scientist," he explained still frustrated, though sometimes with him it's hard to tell if the frustration is real or just pretend, as if he's trying it on for size.

I thought about his definition and reasoning for a few moments, thought about why the teacher would be calling children scientists -- obvious for an adult, not so much for a child.

"Well, E, it's a question of scientific thinking. She's calling them scientists because they're behaving like scientists. They're thinking like scientists." This satisfied him for a few moments, but it didn't satisfy me. I was wondering if he would ask what it means to think scientifically, hoping he would ask. He didn't, so I prompted him. "Do you know what that means, to think like a scientist?"

"No."

"It's a process. You observe. You think about why things happen. You make predictions about why things happen; you check those predictions..."

I fear a lot of Americans really have no clue what it means to think like a scientist.

The other night, while on a walk, I was listening to an old sermon by a religious leader, and he was railing against "intellectualism." He never really defined it. He never really explained why it was so bad other than to say it was vanity. He was upset about how some Biblical scholars will spend so much time picking at the smallest little detail, and as he said that it occurred to me that he really didn't have a firm grasp of what those scholars were doing, how they were examining the text, their methodology and the justification for it.

I think this is a common thread in America, this anti-intellectual position, and it's directed at all sciences. People dismiss all sorts of things they, were they taught like Sid the Science Kid to think scientifically, they likely wouldn't dismiss, and they accept things that, were they taught like Sid the Science Kid to think scientifically, they would dismiss out of hand.

So I was very pleased when E later spoke of thinking scientifically. And as he played Go Fish with the girls, it occurred to me that here is a perfect opportunity for some basic critical thinking: observe (listen to what others are asking for); test (ask for a few things in a systematic way); repeat.

2017

Sunday 31 December 2017

The plan was simple: we were all going to bed early. Waiting for midnight on December 31/January 1? In the grand scheme of things, an arbitrary time in an arbitrary day? Whatever for? But L, who'd napped yesterday because of a lingering illness, really wanted to stay up.

What happened to my early bedtime? I decided to have a beer and watch another episode of The Same Sky, a great German mini-series set in Berlin during the Watergate crisis. There's an East German spy, there are interrogation scenes in Hohenschönhausen, the main Stasi headquarters, there's a family dealing with the effects of the East German doping sports machine -- everything you could want in a series about East Germany. L appeared at the top of the steps and asked plaintively, "Can we stay up together?"

Of course, I agreed.

We went to the living room and spent the last forty minutes watching a bit of a documentary about the Russian revolution. Stalin got a mention early in the film, and I pointed out that he's one of the most destructive figures in history.

"I know," she said simply, explaining that in one of the books she recently read, Bombs for Hitler, one of the characters is Ukranian. And if anyone knew how evil Stalin was, it was Ukrainians at the end of the 1930s.

About ten to twelve, we began looking for live coverage of the ball drop in Times Square, but since we never watch network TV and don't have cable, I'm really clueless about what local channels are, and we couldn't find anything. By the time we decided it was no use, it was 11:59. Off went the television, and we waited for a few moments. Hugs, kisses -- "Happy New Year." And now it's time for bed.

Decisions

Friday 29 December 2017

"I want a flat egg. No, no, I want a bagel and some Cheerios. And some milk."

The Boy's breakfast decision process is similar almost every day. I feel fortunate that we are in a position to provide him with so many choices, but at times, it exhausts us.

This indecision spills over into all parts of the Boy's life. When given a choice for clothes, he can dither similarly. When given options for how to spend the afternoon, he can flip-flop similarly. It's only a mild inconvenience, and probably common for his age. I can't remember L being like that, but perhaps that's just selective memory.

His indecisiveness comes into full bloom (to thoroughly mix my metaphors and split my infinitives) when he as a little money to spend, which has been the case for the last few weeks. He'd earned money with various chores and received some from aunts and neighbors, so for the last few weeks, he's been playing out his options for how to spend his $30.

"I think I want a new log truck," he said one day.

"But you had a log truck, remember. You lost all the logs, and now you don't know where any of it is." That probably wasn't quite accurate: I don't know those things are, which is not to say that he doesn't know.

"Well, still, I think I want a new one."

A few days after that, it was a new Nerf gun.

"Son, you have two Nerf guns."

"But they don't fire that well." Don't they? I wasn't aware of that.

He toyed with a few other ideas, but when we went to the toy store tonight, he'd finally settled on a Nerf gun.

And then he had to choose which gun...