matching tracksuits

fun in threes, sometimes fours

Reset

Wednesday 13 August 2014

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With me heading back to school for another year on the more difficult side of the desk, E has had to return to daycare. He’s not happy about it. These first two days have been tough on K as she takes him, for he cries when arrives, and today he began the tears even before we left. He’ll get over it, for sure: he’s sociable, and all the teachers say he’s been interacting with the kids well, playing, sharing.

There’s always a bit of guilt we as parents feel as we drop off our child to be cared for by strangers. Yes, E knows them; yes, E loves at least one of them silly. But they’re still strangers. We would not know these people were we not paying them to take care of E while we’re at work. The irony of the modern world: we have all these time saving devices, but we end up just working more. Were it not for our desire — no, our need — to head back to Poland on a regular basis, our desire to make sure our children stay connected to their roots, would K continue working? I know where her heart is.

And yet, doesn’t some good come from this? After all, the Boy is going to have to head to school at some point. This is good preparation for that. L went through the same program and entered kindergarten solidly prepared.

There must be a balance somewhere.

Back Again

Tuesday 12 August 2014

We’ll be starting school in a week, meeting (some) students in two days, but today, the faculty gathered to do two things: deal with the myriad administrative announcements and clarifications that make up the bureaucracy of public education, and get caught back up with colleagues.

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Last year we faced the stress of a new principal: what will change? What will stay the same? After a year with this man, who has done an excellent job at transforming some problems at our school as well as keeping everyone on their toes, we know that we’re in for more of the same this year. It’s good and bad. I have this lurking fear that changes we know are coming are going to make me let go of some of my most prized pedagogical possessions — lessons, units, techniques that might not work with the new approach (educational fad or not? too early to tell) well be taking as a faculty. Yet change is often good. Still, on this end of it, it’s a bit daunting.

Soup

Monday 11 August 2014

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L is a picky eater -- no doubt about it. Certainly she has some odd tastes, odd by the average American girl standards, I think. Still she can throw us a curve ball, protesting something that seems so logical for her to life. Soup is always a hit with her, but K's tomato soup from yesterday wasn't a hit. Not sure why: it used to be a big hit. But it wasn't. And it wasn't any better tonight when we finished up the leftovers. She basically ate next to nothing, leaving almost a whole bowl of soup. Granted, she got nothing else for the evening with the understanding that she would have to finish the soup before she could have anything else. Nothing.

Tonight, during prayers, we reached "Give us this day our daily bread," and I pointed out to L that she would get that soup back at breakfast. "We're not going to waste food, especially when it's something that you used to like and eat willingly. She fussed, predictably, but then, thinking about reading the news and the horrors occurring in Syria and Iraq as ISIS sweeps through and imposes strict Islamic law, committing their own brand of ethnic cleansing, I decided to give the Girl a little perspective.

"L, there are children in a country called Iraq now who are literally dying because they don't get food or water."

"Why?"

Brief overview appropriate for a seven-year-old, includes terms like "bad people" and oversimplification.

"So these children are so hungry, L, that you could spill that soup on the floor, and they would willingly lap it up like they were animals."

Silence. Wide eyes.

"You're lucky: you fuss about being given something you don't want to eat. These children, if they had the energy to fuss, would fuss about not having anything to eat. At all."

We'll see tomorrow what happens. I'm hopeful, but I know how stubborn L is. Besides, that "kids starving in [insert country]" argument seems rarely to work.

Pavement

Sunday 10 August 2014

Just down the street from our house is another street -- typical of suburbia, I know. But this street is different. It's freshly paved, smooth and inviting, and it has just enough of a slope that anyone can enjoy riding up and down it.

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And so of late, we've taken to doing just that: E on his four-wheel pusher, the Girl on her new bike or her scooter, I on my bike, and usually K on foot.

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Occasionally we meet neighbors there, either by arrangement or by accident. Some are more enthusiastic about the activity than others; some ride with more abandon than others; some leave me shaking my head in wonder. Up and down, up and down, races and gentle rides, laughing and literal screaming ("That's not fair!") -- it becomes a little microcosm of childhood.

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I have my own memories like this -- summers on bikes, hills that are a pleasure (as well as hills that are hellish), riding with friends.

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Seeing my own children follow those same paths brings a smile.

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I See It!

Saturday 09 August 2014

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The Boy toddles toward the stairs down to our transforming basement, cup of chocolate milk in hand. He gets a little excited and the milk soon splashes all over the floor. As I'm cleaning it up, I mutter to myself that this was avoidable "because I foresaw it."

"No, Daddy," E corrects. "I saw it."

Anne Applebaum

Friday 08 August 2014

Tron

Thursday 07 August 2014

It looks dated now, but when I first saw Disney’s Tron at age ten, I was blown away. I didn’t really notice the Pac Man embedded in the control screen, though. Those guys at Disney — silly, silly.

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Will and Temptation

Wednesday 06 August 2014

prayerIt’s far too late for this little girl to be heading to bed, but in these last few days of summer vacation, we’ve grown lax.

We kneel for evening prayers, and I think of something Father L said to me today during confession, and it gives me an idea.

“In the name of the Father and of the Son,” we begin, already falling into that rhythm that shows we aren’t really thinking about what we’re saying. We begin, and as we pray “Thy will be done,” I stop L.

“What’s something you can do to help make this come about, to help bring about God’s will on Earth?” L shrugs, so I clarify: “What is God? He’s love, right? So to fulfill God’s will, we must love. So what’s something you could do to help fulfill that?”

She thinks for a moment. “Not yell at E,” she replies confidently. We all do it: we get frustrated or worried with what the little two-year-old bundle of fascination and excitement is about to do, see potential disaster (or sometimes actual disaster), and call out, “E!” He heads for furniture with a drill: “E!” He snaps the head off a doll: “E!” So L and I talk about how we should all take that to heart.

Returning to the prayer: “and lead us not into temptation.” Time for reteaching: “What are we sometimes tempted to do, something that really goes against God’s will of love?”

“Yell at E.”

That seems to be the key to meaningful prayer for a seven-year-old: connect it to real life, make it simple, and reinforce. Sort of like teaching in the classroom…

Time

Tuesday 05 August 2014

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We first saw it and thought it was an abandoned plantation house of some sort. It was pitch dark, later than we’d imagined arriving. We were tired. And out of the black appeared a house unimaginable, two stories clearly with high ceilings, columns in the front with a great balcony over the entrance — it was something out of a Faulker novel.

The Once and Future Carpenter

Monday 04 August 2014