the girl | matching tracksuits

Circus

Sunday 05 February 2012 | 1 Comment

Remember your first circus?

The excitement as the animals and performers all came in, music blaring, ring master chanting?

Remember your gasps as you watched acrobats perform what seemed to your young eyes to be impossible feats?

Remember seeing the elephants and thinking, "It's not just Dumbo. They really do line up like that"?

Remember the ball in the pit of your stomach as you watched riders in this or that steel cage of doom?

My folks took me to my first circus when I was about L's age, and I still remember those sights. Hopefully the Girl will remember today's first as well.

More photos at Flickr.

The Games We Play

Wednesday 01 February 2012 | 0 Comments

The Girl simply loves playing games: Candy Land, checkers, Go Fish, "the memory game" (Never just "memory" for her), Curious George -- you name it, she'll play it.

The long-standing challenge for us as parents has always been teaching her to win with humility and lose with dignity. It's tough to teach a child something you yourself are not good at, for it must be said that I don't always lose with dignity myself. Chess is about the only game I play, and whileÂ I don't pitch a fit, my pulse quickens at a loss, and I'm soon berating myself for my obvious mistakes.

Yet by their very nature, these games make excellent benchmarks for social skills development. There are countless metrics:

How far into the game does the first fuss appear?
How long does the first fuss last?
Once it subsides, does the first frustration return immediately?
Is the Girl capable of finishing the game or has she worked herself into an irreversible tizzy?
When it begins to look like a loss is inevitable, does she give up or continue playing?

Recent gaming adventures have shown that L is developing a tolerance for the inevitable eventual loss, an ability to recover quickly from initial frustrations, and the poise to win and lose well. It was, in short, truly a phase.

Sleeping

Sunday 29 January 2012 | 0 Comments

After an afternoon of biking...

Cycling Afternoon

Saturday 28 January 2012 | 0 Comments

A new bike, sized right, a quiet cul-de-sac, and an experienced friend who's a wheel-radius ahead in cycling development make for an afternoon of colossal advances in biking. The radius ahead, however, was often a radius to the right, to the left, a radius behind.

Much to the Girl's consternation. Five year olds together, best friends, are often like an old married couple: constantly arguing, but inseparable.

Delicate Work

Wednesday 25 January 2012 | 0 Comments

The Girls

Monday 23 January 2012 | 0 Comments

My girls.

A Walk in the Park

Sunday 22 January 2012 | 0 Comments

After a day spent indoors, we were all in need of some motion outside. A damp, gray sky and cold air conspired to keep us inside -- we all are fighting illness in one stage or another -- but the promise of a warming walk won out.

We headed downtown, to Falls Park, with its cantilevered bridge and short, riverside paths. It had been months -- probably over a year -- since we'd been to that particular park, and it seemed there was a new attraction there: an entire fleet of bench swings.

And the Girl made a valiant effort to swing on every single one.

The swings certainly weren't the only attraction. There was a fascinating tangle of roots,

several dozen rocks begging to be tossed into the swift current,

and an alligator that sneaked up on Mama and almost gobbled her up for a late afternoon snack.

Eventually, everyone needs a late afternoon snack, though.

Rainy Day Play

Saturday 21 January 2012 | 0 Comments

Rainy days require umbrellas to check the mail -- whichever umbrella one can find.

And rain days require inventive play.

Working the Puzzle

Tuesday 17 January 2012 | 0 Comments

The Girl has a little marble and maze puzzle (maybe "ball bearing and maze" is a better description) that involves manipulating the plane of the puzzle so that the ball bearing roles through the maze. Nothing new: we all had one growing up. She's developed an unorthodox method of solving it, though: she simply shakes it until the bearing gradually crawls to the center.