Games
the girl
Teaching
Before dinner, K and E sit in the middle of the kitchen floor, working a puzzle. It was the Boy's idea, his initiative.
After dinner (more or less), K and L sit at the dinner table, doing Polish lessons. It was K's idea, her initiative.
Perhaps if we could figure out some way to make Polish lessons as fun for L as puzzles are for E, we might have more success. And so that's what I tried, putting on my jester's hat and giving ridiculously wrong answers to L's work, getting a giggle and correction.
Posing
Before It Begins Again
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.
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
Black-eyed peas, cornbread, playing in the sink, being a gaming gadfly -- thus starts 2015
First Day 2015
"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.
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.
Last Things
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.
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.
I'm not sure who was more excited: E, because his dear sheriff was back, or L, because she found it.
Playing
Sleep
Long gone are the days when she was the first to wake up, probably because the days she was the first to go to bed are equally long gone. Nine, nine-thirty has been her wake-up time the last few days.
Dual-Play
It’s fantastic when a single toy entertains both.