matching tracksuits

fun in threes, sometimes fours

the boy

Prawdziwy Polak

Monday 05 January 2015 | 0 Comments

Traditional Polish cuisine has lots of pickled items in the menu. It makes sense: the winters are long and cold, and there's no way to get fresh food (other than meat or dairy) in the dead of winter. If you want cabbage in February, you'd better turn it into sauerkraut in the autumn; if you want cukes in January, convert them to pickles in the fall. To love Polish food, then, means to love sour things.

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To be really Polish -- to be Polish at the bone -- you have to love your sauerkraut. The Boy, for instance, ate three helpings of it today at dinner.

Before It Begins Again

Sunday 04 January 2015 | 0 Comments

It always goes in a flash, an absolutely yet tragically predictable flash. Two breaths, a party or two, and suddenly we're eating lunch on the last Sunday of the break. And what a lunch to have, a classic of Polish country cooking: kotlet schabowy with the requisite sauerkraut and potatoes. The Girl loves the cutlet; the Boy loves it all.

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After lunch, we decide it's time for a walk: after almost three full days of rain, we're all sick of being inside. The Boy takes his four-wheel coaster, and the Girl opts for a scooter, but putting the Boy on wheels is always tricky: "I'm Lightning McQueen!" he squeals and with each time, rides further and further out in front of us.

"E, if you're not going to stop when I tell you to," I explain after he ignores us a couple of times, "you won't be able to ride this anymore." It works for a while, but not long enough to get us home, so he finishes up the outing on foot and in tears.

We have to hurry home, though, because K has yeasty dough rising. "Pół godziny!" K insists as we start out, and sure enough, half and hour later, we're back in the kitchen as K rolls out the dough for what she calls babeczki, which would be tempting to translate as "muffins" but in this case, it would be incorrect.

It's one of those things I'm unable to translate, something like cinnamon rolls with a plum and apple jam -- leftovers from the Christmas Eve compote -- in the place of the sweet cinnamon mix.

With a day ending like that, L and I think we can head back to school tomorrow...

Southern Beginnings

Friday 02 January 2015 | 0 Comments

Black-eyed peas, cornbread, playing in the sink, being a gaming gadfly -- thus starts 2015

First Day 2015

Thursday 01 January 2015 | 0 Comments

"Let's go to the airplane park!" There's a small airport near downtown Greenville which has an aviation-themed park next to it. The far end of the park abuts the runway, and it's a favorite for the kids: you can play on a fantastic playground, ride your bike around the paved oval circling the whole playground, and watch small airplanes land and take-off.

At the far end of the track, next to the runway, there is a significantly steep slope -- significantly steep for a toddler, that is -- and it should be a heart-stopping moment every time the Boy roars down the slope. But he does it so carefully, first going down only half the slope, then a bit more, a bit more, until he's going down the whole thing. He's so cautious that it takes some of the worry from both K and me. But every time we're there without a helmet for him, I think, "Drat -- should have brought that helmet."

After dinner, it's play time. First some family play with E's fishing game he got for Christmas. We try to teach the Boy how to let the swinging magnet slow so that he can lower it to the fish to "catch" it, but he has a more effective way: simply grab the magnet in one hand while holding the rod in the other. Simple. But eventually we convince him.

Afterward, we split up to have some more interest-specific play. The Boy and I head up to his room to play with his cars. Although we only have the sheriff character from Cars, we choose a car to be Lightning McQueen and another to be Mater and go tractor tipping, just like in the film.

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The ladies, in the meantime, play Ticket to Ride, a train-based strategy game that enthralls the Boy -- trains, so of course! -- but is obviously too much for his young mind to comprehend.

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Last Things

Wednesday 31 December 2014 | 0 Comments

For weeks, he'd been saying it: "Mikołaj is going to bring me a police car!" And since Mikołaj knew of the Boy's fondness for Cars, he brought not just any police car, but the sheriff from the film.

Then, the day after Christmas, he lost it. The Boy is not one to lose things: he has a fantastic memory of where he left this or that, so K and I figured the obvious: it fell out of his pocket at some point when he was in the backyard helping me with the leaves. So the search began. We looked through leaf piles, walked about in the backyard, checked in the house just in case -- no luck.

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Today, while out, L and K looked again. And much to everyone's delight, L found the sheriff, then reenacted the discovery for the camera.

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I'm not sure who was more excited: E, because his dear sheriff was back, or L, because she found it.

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Playing

Tuesday 30 December 2014 | 0 Comments

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Cuddle

Sunday 28 December 2014 | 0 Comments

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Dual-Play

Thursday 25 December 2014 | 0 Comments

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It’s fantastic when a single toy entertains both.

Wigilia 2014

Wednesday 24 December 2014 | 0 Comments

Our last Christmas in Poland was ten years ago. I could probably dig through some pictures and find shots from that day. There would be a lot that’s the same. K of course would be there, as would the compote, fish dish and some sort of soup — likely the same soup we served this evening.

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There would have been similar pictures of preparation: of ironing, of setting the table, of getting kids ready.

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There would possibly have been pictures of someone — K’s father? her mother? — reading the gospel passage about the nativity before dinner.

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There would have been pictures of a grandchild (K’s nephew W) cuddling with babcia.

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The changes, of course, would be in the people involved. Some present this evening would be absent from pictures of our last wigilia in Poland; some present then are absent from pictures of this evening. Some of the pictures could be recreated with older versions of the photo’s subjects while others can’t occur again in this world.

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Certainly that is the draw of traditions: while the world is changing around us, while we ourselves are changing, there are a few things that remain constant, a few things we can count on.

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There’s probably some psychological term for this need we have to organize our lives around traditions. Perhaps more than one because it seems that’s what obsessive-compulsive disorder is: taking “traditions” to the extreme. Maybe that’s what people mean when they say we’re all a little OCD in our own special ways.

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Wigilia could certainly provide plenty of material for someone excessively obsessed with order as he sees it to get bent out of shape about. K and I used to be a little like that. Perhaps K more, since she did almost all the work and always had this image in her head of what it was all supposed to be like, sort of a Platonic form of the perfect wigilia dinner.

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There was a time when, perhaps, our lack of authentic opłatki (how did that happen?!) might have been more emotionally problematic for one of us, or both. Perhaps, or maybe not. It’s hard to tell looking back. But yesterday, looking in the cookie and cracker section of the local grocery story, I found it amusing that I was looking for a substitute for something I could have easily found ten years ago at any number of stores.

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Tonight, though, it wasn’t about the food, or the opłatki, or the compote, or the perfectly ironed table cloth, or the piles of baked goods, or even the gifts.

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Tonight, it was about the little flashes of joy that the children experienced. L was thrilled, as always, with barszcz. (Not entirely — she prefers the Ukranian variety, made without the fermented beets that give wigilia barszcz its slight kick) The Boy was overjoyed that Santa had brought, as E had expressed countless times, a police car for him.

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And everyone was happy about the deserts — that’s a tradition worth being OCD about.

Previous Years

Wigilia 2003

Wigilia 2004

Wigilia 2005

Wigilia 2006

Wigilia 2007

Wigilia 2008

Wigilia 2009

https://matchingtracksuits.com/2010/12/25/wigilia-2010/

Wigilia 2011

Wigilia 2012

Wigilia 2013

The Actual Party

Sunday 21 December 2014 | 0 Comments

The Girl turned eight last week. Of course we had a party for her, but Nana and Papa, the Boy, Mama, and Tata -- well, it's an alright party, but most of the responsibility for screaming and hyperactivity falls on the head of the birthday girl herself. It's a big responsibility, and L made a valiant effort, with some help from the Boy, to roust everyone out of their chairs, but mainly it was the Girl's work.

The setting
The setting

What she needed was, say, three other girls, roughly her age, a load of sugar, some presents, and a sleepover party.

Lighting the candles shortly before
Lighting the candles shortly before
blowing them out.
blowing them out.

It is only then that the full silliness can blossom, for adults don't really appreciate a little girl's efforts to blow out her candles with a fully-open mouth like kids would.

Earring inspection
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Arranging the new earrings

Afterward, it was time to organize the gifts. Since the Girl got her ears pierced, all the presents had a common theme, and one cannot just toss dozens of earrings together into a chaotic pile.

Once the sun went down, though, we had only one option: the best lights in town, according to some. Over 350,000 lights, three months to set up, three more to take down -- an impressive show.

The adults wandered about, wondering about the motive behind the lights, which surely cost thousands of dollars a year; the kids wandered about, wondering about the free hot chocolate.