Columbia Zoo
the boy
Columbia
The Girl has loved performing for years. She doesn't often have an audience, but she really doesn't need one.
On a weekend trip, she can entertain herself in the hotel room dancing about as if she were on the biggest stage in the world.
She can dance a little reel on the way from the table to retrieve a spoon for little brother's soup as if she were part of a touring dance troupe.
A hairbrush can be a microphone and the hardwood floors throughout our house make every space a recital hall.
This weekend, though, it was a little different. It wasn't the improvised routines that fill her week with little joys as she imagines herself on this or that stage. It wasn't plunking away with her piano teacher. It was an auditioned role. A practiced and prepared role. And it wasn't just her: it was almost three hundred kids across the state, all practicing with their music teacher after school, learning the same songs in big city schools and small rural schools. Students of multiple ethnicities, races, religions, and mental aptitudes with one thing in common: an ability to sing. A gift in common. A gift they are willing to share.
And in the midst of all this, like magnets to a pole, two Polish families found each other and the girls made friends instantly.
Resisting
Part of parenting is resisting. Resisting the urge to give in to tantrums because, let's face it, it would be easier in the short run. Resisting the urge to say something sarcastic when it's really not going to do anything but make the situation worse. Resisting the urge to change your kid's personality because some little quirk here or there is mildly annoying. Resisting the urge to compare your kids to others' children. Resisting the urge to use one sibling as a model for the other: "Why can't you be more like your brother?" Resisting the urge to let television be the babysitter when you're tired. Resisting the urge to say "No" when "Yes" won't hurt anything other than your schedule. Resisting the urge to say "Yes" when it's so much easier. Resisting the urge disengage when tired. Resisting the urge to stop resisting the urges...
And part of parenting is embracing urges.
Problem Solving
This Week
Late-January Monday
It's been a long time since we've had a fairly typical Monday. Last Monday, we had no school, so K and I went out and bought a new car. The Monday before that, we were out of school because of snow. Or was that the previous Monday? Going back further there was winter break and so on. So today was a normal Monday. Up early, kids ready, off we go.
The afternoon was fairly typical as well. After chess club, I arrived home late. Everyone was in the backyard. I made my afternoon coffee, poured it in a travel mug, and headed out -- only to see everyone coming in.
"I'm coming in to get dinner ready," K said. The temptation was to be lazy, but laziness is what we got all weekend, with the rain, rain, and more rain.
"I'll go down with them," I suggested, and both the kids squealed and excitedly ran back down to the trampoline/swing/hammock/bridge/hiding spot area we've been developing over the last few years.
Afterward we had dinner. Relatively uneventful -- which is really saying something. The kids lately have been bickering like mad over the slightest thing, and it turns dinner into something less than perfectly enjoyable. We decided to conduct an experiment -- the "we" being K and I, for the kids would never agree to it. Not knowing what influence was primarily responsible for their behavior (for it's not been just the bickering), we've eliminated all possible influences for a week: no television, no computer, no friends. Just a week to refocus and recharge. The kids this weekend had to find other ways to entertain themselves when we weren't playing with them. L read, played with her Legos, drew. The Boy drew, played with his Legos, looked at books. The results are beginning to show: tonight, a much calmer dinner, with no hysterics about anything. In the evening, a calmness that hasn't been in our house for a while.
Board Games
Chasing the Unseen
I know we’re entering a new phase in the Girl’s life: chasing. It’s not just that now, with her birthday last month, she’s in the double digits. There’s more to it than that. She’s not a tween, is she? Isn’t that eleven? Twelve? Yet there she was this afternoon, down on the hammock, talking to her male friend as he sat on the other hammock.
It’s not that I’m suggesting that they were discussing anything more mature than a ten- and eleven-year-old should discuss. She still says that boys are icky. (Hopefully that will last for another couple of years, when they can comfortably become iffy at best. Maybe a blossoming interest when she starts high school?) No, it’s not what topic they were chasing down; it’s that they were talking. They weren’t playing; they weren’t running; they weren’t being silly. They were sitting and talking.
The Boy doesn’t talk with his friends. They play. They play with an intensity that makes me envious, with an energy that makes me wonder if I ever had even a small portion of it. They’re talking consists only of what they’re playing.
“Pretend I’m a policeman…”
“Let’s go to the trampoline!”
If I had to bet what L and W were discussing, I’d say it’s probably Pokemon-related. That’s what they talk about most of the time. That’s their common interest. But still — talking, not playing.
We’ve started chasing her. She’s still a little girl, but that’s ending in the next couple of years. Given my shock when I look past entries from the “Time Machine” widget here on this silly site and think, “Dang, that was three years ago?!” I know that those two years will pass so quickly that I won’t even notice if I’m not careful. And then we will be chasing her. Chasing her growth. Chasing the unseen.
Later in the day, the Boy gives chase in a different way. Playing on the driveway, he crashes to the concrete as he’s chasing a ball. His palms hit with an audible slap, and I could feel the burn in my own palms.
But not a peep, only a little cry of panic as he saw the ball heading to the edge of the driveway, threatening to roll down the hill and into the creek that serves as the boundary between our backyard and that of our neighbors’ yards. He popped back up, scurried to the end of the drive only half a blink too late. Down the hill rolled the ball.
There was a time when he wouldn’t head down that far into the yard without an adult, just as L was at that early age. But today, he didn’t even hesitate, didn’t even look to see if an adult was anywhere around. He just slowed a bit to make it down the tricky part, chasing the ball with the certainty that he could catch it that only a four-year-old could hold.
Candy Land
Helping with the Zurek
The little man, helping as always.