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Our Town

Tuesday 25 August 2015

It looked like the Boy had made quite the mess in his room when I arrived home, but he quickly corrected me. “It’s a miasto!” he explained ever so patiently, as usual mixing his languages.

And it is indeed a city, or perhaps town — miasteczko, but he wouldn’t have said that — complete with fire and police stations, a construction site, and a hospital.

“That’s over half an hour of work!” K explained with a laugh when I got back downstairs. Half an hour of work, many hours of fun: it’s still up, several days later.

A Rainbow, Some Circuits, and Cars

Tuesday 11 August 2015

We've had rain every afternoon for the past several days. After such a long streak of dry weather, it is certainly a welcome view, even if it does prevent the kids from going outside. But the rain really only lasts an hour or so in the late afternoon, so it's easy to work around. Today, though, we got an added bonus: our own personal rainbow.

"Do you think there's a pot of gold at the end?" L asked, and it occurred to me that we might actually be able to make our fortune if that were the case as both ends the rainbow seemed to be within our property lines. We wouldn't even have to worry about claims of the property owner once we tracked down the gold. Sadly, though, before we could go out and hunt it down (or perhaps both down -- who knows whether or not rainbows have treasure at both ends), the colors faded.

But the rain really wasn't even a problem for the kids: everyone had something to do. L was busy loading apps on the tablet she bought for herself with the money she's been collecting. I won't quite say "saving" because it's been burning a cliche hole in her pocket, and she got most of it in one go. Still, she managed to hold off on spending it in Poland, likely because Babcia kept her financed and all the friends who came to visit brought little knickknacks as well

As for the Boy, he was, as usual, content playing with his cars.

Tiring

Wednesday 05 August 2015

Since everyone has returned, the trampoline in the backyard has seen a lot of action.

It's good for everything: exercise, laughs, and coordination.

The Boy especially has improved his coordination.

The Old Man has regained a skill or two as well.

More Climbing

Thursday 16 July 2015

Kajtek has been feeling a little out of sorts. Somehow he's gotten injured -- maybe a fight, maybe something more innocent, maybe something less. Today, he finally came out of his hiding place, and E was thrilled and went to comfort him. Afterward, a bit of digging -- he built a swimming pool in Babcia's onion bed, and he goes back from time to time to make sure it's still useable.

In the afternoon, we returned to Wypasiona Dolina, the line park just outside Zubrzyca. E has been begging to return almost every day, and so we met some friends with their kids and let the kids go crazy.

The kids weren't the only ones who went crazy. K decided it was finally time to try a line park adventure. After some training, she began on the course. Sadly, though, her forearms began giving out long before the end of the course, and before she completed it, we had to call for help. I wasn't going to memoralize the picture, but as she was being rescued, she laughed, "Take a picture!"

In the meantime, the Boy and his companions worked on the greatest adventure of the day: building an actual swimming pool -- of sorts.

He came home dirty and wet, signs that show just how perfect the outing was.

Final Night

Monday 15 June 2015

It comes around generally every two years, but these last couple of times, there’s been a twist: the last night before leaving to Poland has been bittersweet because of the way we’re leaving. Last year, it was L and I who left, with the Boy staying home with K. This year, it is I who stays behind. At least temporarily. At least in theory.

Whether or not I go, and right now the latter is more likely, depends on a number of variables, some in my control, some perhaps less so.

So tonight might possibly be the last evening we’re together as a family for up to seven weeks. And what does a family do that last evening when they might not be together for a very long time? If they’ve just received a gifted trampoline, they jump.

Up and Down

Thursday 11 June 2015

Trampolines, for the briefest of moments, allow you to break an otherwise unbreakable law, unbreakable because it's a physical not prescriptive cultural law: gravity. We go higher than we otherwise would be able, we seemingly float at our apogee for a half-moment longer, and the effects on our legs of all our weight crashing down are substantially diminished. Which is a long way of trying to explain the obvious: it's simply fun.

And tempting: as the Girl hurls her feet over her head, trying, again and again, to do a full front flip and land on her feet, I think back to a time ten years ago when, visiting a friend, I bounced about on his kids' trampoline and casually landed a forward flip. Nothing to it, really. Now, I jump, jump, jump, thinking of what my body needs to do to toss my feet over my own head, and while I know all the components of the action, my body says, "Well, maybe it's not so simple..."

Bubbles

Saturday 23 May 2015

The Boy wakes up just when K and L both fall asleep in the afternoon for a nap. He's cranky, fussy, and high maintenance. What to do? Take him down to our swing/hammock area and blow bubbles. And when everyone wakes back up, what else are we doing to do but show them our tricks: I create the bubbles; he chases them down and destroys them.

It's another one of those moments when I marvel at the simplicity of what it takes to entertain a three-year-old. He can do the same thing over and over continuously, like ~~most~~ all kids his age. "I'm bored" has become an occasional refrain we hear from the Girl; never do we hear it from the Boy, unless he's just copying her. The Boy can simply do the same thing over and over and over and over once he's decided it's entertaining, and what he finds entertaining can be the most simplistic action. Look at what it takes to entertain adults: vast stadiums with grown men (almost always men) being paid multi-million dollar contracts to play a sport so everyone else can vicariously participate, when all they need, all theyÂ really need, is a bottle of bubbles.

Playing Cars with the Boy

Saturday 11 April 2015

Children’s Museum

Sunday 01 March 2015

It's cold. It's raining. And we've been inside for what seems like forever. What to do? Go to the children's museum.

We haven't take the Boy, and the Girl, while she went with her class last year, went with us when she was only a little older the Boy. And the result? What fun!

Double Snow

Thursday 26 February 2015

Tuesday we had a snow day. The Boy was so thrilled at the prospect of playing in the snow that it really didn't matter that there was no snow to speak of. All Monday evening he was talking about getting to play in the snow, getting to make a snow man, throw snowballs, shovel snow with his backhoe.

I knew that there was little chance of snowball fights, snowmen, or much else. But I'd also known that a bigger storm was coming later in the week. A real storm. So I reassured the Boy that we would have plenty of snow to play in come Thursday.

The Boy didn't mind the small amount of snow, though. Snow is snow, and as long as it was something he could shove around with his toys, he was thrilled.

We were all excited about Wednesday's storm, though. They kept shifting the start time, further and further back, from late afternoon to early evening, but the intensity only grew. Three to five inches eventually became a possibility up to ten inches -- a real snow storm.

Wednesday during class when students asked when certain assignments were due, I kept saying things like, "If this storm is anything like they're saying it will be, we won't be coming back until Monday, so we'll make it due then."

Finally the snow began, and it looked so promising, falling so thick and hard that it was possible even to capture it in a picture. I thought of the few great snow storms of my youth in southwest Virginia, where it rarely snowed but every few years would let loose a great storm that piled drifts three or more feet deep. Snow so deep that one had to pack it down before sledding was even a remote possibility. Snow that turned everything into a white blanket. Of course there's no comparing that to the seven winters I spent in southern Poland, the winters that were the norm of K's youth, where there was so much snow that even I got sick of it.

The governor had already declared a state of emergency, and all the reporters, after literally reporting on half an inch of snow Tuesday with giddy delight, were all probably flushed with anticipation. The school district canceled school before we'd even completed Wednesday's schedule, and friends posted pictures on social media of virtually empty bread aisles in local supermarkets.

But when we woke up this morning, expectant, we found a repeat of Tuesday, a thin layer of slush that seemed destined to melt shortly after lunch.

Local news web sites quickly offered stories explaining what happened. "The moisture was there," meteorologists explained, "but the temperature just popped up two degrees and that changed everything." Our official total, as opposed to five or more inches, was 0.8 inches. Further north there were totals more like what we were promised, but nothing really that impressive. Headlines developed through the day: "National Weather Service stands by Upstate snow forecast." It seemed everyone was disappointed on one level or another.

Still, we had enough slush on the ground to roll a small snowman, enough slush to get in boots and make the Girl complain, enough slush to get the Boy cold in a few minutes and whining to go inside.

But not enough snow even to get all the ground damp.

We in the South take what we can get when it comes to snow, though. Supposedly areas of Alabama and Mississippi got close to ten inches, so perhaps by the time it got here -- well, who knows. We had slush, we built a slushman, and headed in late morning knowing perfectly well that we would be going to school tomorrow.