matching tracksuits

fun in threes, sometimes fours

the girl

Morning Memories

Monday 12 August 2013 | 1 Comment

Of our two children, the Boy, perhaps not surprisingly, is always the first to wake. His usual time, left to himself, is around 7:00. If we’re lucky on the weekend, he might sleep until a little closer to eight, but he also likes to get up around five just for a change. Still, no matter what, he wakes earlier than L nine times out of ten. And so we do the logical thing: we change his diaper, dress him,  and take him into the Girl’s room and ploop him beside her.

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His reaction is now always the same: he looks for L’s nighttime sippy cup. He’s begun using a sippy cup — adorned with illustrations from Cars — and he likes to help himself to L’s princess sippy cup.

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Eventually the Girl wakes up, usually quite glad to see the Boy. The giggles, tickling, and general silliness begin, and so everyone starts the day with a smile.

A perfect start to the day.

Corn!

Thursday 08 August 2013 | 0 Comments

L is such a picky eater. She’s a first child: we really didn’t know what we were doing. We followed this book’s advice tempered with that person’s wisdom and those mothers’ experience. We’re doing things a bit differently with E. He eats what we eat, and he has from the moment we could give him solid food. As a result, he’s not a picky eater.

There are a few culinary preferences that the Boy and L have in common, though, and one of them is corn on the cob.

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L hummed and purred as she ate, working it back and forth like a typewriter paper carriage. The Boy makes use of a variety of methods: the double-handed high hold, the single-handed nibble-from-the-end, the single-handed reverse grip flute position (the right hand would be gripping a flute from the top, not the bottom), and variants of them all.

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Occasionally, something not-quite-right hits him, and he balls up his fist and his face into what looks like a mysterious sourness.

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But he gets over it, takes a new grip, and continues.

Off-road

Monday 05 August 2013 | 0 Comments

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The Girl has a new bike, with gears and hand-brakes. It's a lot to get used to. Today, she lost control, ran into a ditch, and like a champ, didn't panic but merely let the bike coast to a stop.

Lost Treasure

Monday 05 August 2013 | 0 Comments

"Daddy, we found this but we can't open it." I recognized it immediately: my mother's old jewelry box that had long ago become storage for toys. "We can't get in it, so we don't know what's there." And neither did I, but I was curious.

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Nana and Papa had saved some of my old toys and books from my childhood, and now that K and I have children of our own, we've pulled some of the toys out and re-issued them. The Boy has gone simply crazy over my old Matchbox cars, and L has incorporated some of my old books into her favorites rotation, but this old box was a mystery. There was no use searching for a key, and the thought of picking a lock -- even a simple mechanism like this -- was laughable. A straight-slot screwdriver and a quick twist of the wrist did the trick, though.

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"Oh, some of my old G.I. Joe toys!" And I was instantly transported back thirty years to the time when these simple bits of plastic were the world to me. I pulled the figures out, remembering how I'd discovered the fact that unscrewing the small screw in the figure's back opened a new world of creative possibilities: this figure's legs could be attached to that figure's torso.

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Some of the figures exited the O.R. in worse repair than they entered. "What happened to that fellows arm?" I pondered before realize that it must have been a battle wound. The same with that fellow's melted-off hand.

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My collection was always modest. I had a few figures, a few vehicles. Several in my collection were from mail-in offers, including two of my four bad guys. It was a long time before I realized how utterly laughable the idea of Cobra -- a secret army plotting to take over the world -- was, but at the time, it seemed a more realistic alternative to Star Wars figures.

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And besides, G.I. Joe figures articulated at the elbows and knees, far more realistic than the Star Wars figures that had to look like they were eternally goose-stepping imitators of Frankenstein. Later figures even added a second plane of motion: the elbows rotated.

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None in my collection sported that awesomeness, though: they were old-school, bend-at-the-elbow figures.

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I took them out, lined them up, and explained to L who were the good guys and who the bad.

"Can we play with them tomorrow?" she asked.

"Sure," I replied, wondering what schemes and stories a girl used to playing with princesses and Barbies might come up with for a pile of old G.I. Joe figures.

Saturday at the Pool

Saturday 03 August 2013 | 0 Comments

Our first day at the pool this year as a family, but alas, the Boy, still recovering from some upper respitory infection, cannot get into the water.

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Instead, he stays with Nana and Papa, forever pointing to the pool, forever needing distracting. It's so unfair, so inexplicable: everyone else takes turns in the water, and the poor Boy is stuck.

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For the Girl, it's a continuation from last year: more development, more courage -- diving, diving, forever diving. With a new set of flippers, she's able to get deeper faster.

"But Tata, it hurts my ears to go that deep."

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She also adds a new trick or two, like diving into the water through the ring.

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"Perhaps I could try that," I suggest.

"I've got to get the camera for that," K replies.

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"I didn't think you'd make it," she replies with a smile.

Views from the Pool

Saturday 03 August 2013 | 0 Comments

Peep

Saturday 03 August 2013 | 0 Comments

L’s favorite cartoon of late, Peep and the Big Wide World. I have to say, I enjoy it too: simple animation that focuses on the story, with real-life applications afterward.

Watching Cartoons Together

Friday 02 August 2013 | 1 Comment

kids

Monopolies

Thursday 01 August 2013 | 1 Comment

"Daddy, will you play with me?" It's a common refrain from the Girl when we're home alone, just the three of us, and the Boy is down for his nap. And lately, the answer to my question "What would you like to play?" is itself a question: "Can we play a board game?"

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It's an opportunity to see how much the Girl has really matured in the last year. We play Sorry; she loses -- no tears. We play Monopoly Junior; she wins -- no hysterics.

I find my own attitudes towards these games are vastly different, though. Sorry depends a great deal on chance, but there's a bit of strategy involved. You draw a seven and you have to think of how best to split those seven moves between two pawns. You draw a "Sorry!" card and you have to determine which is the best piece of your opponent to replace, and it has to be a balance between what helps you the most and what hurts your opponent the most.

Monolopy Junior, though, is pure chance. Roll the dice; move the piece; buy the property (which in Junior involves merely buying a ticket booth -- looks like a regular Monolopy house -- and putting it on the square) or pay the owner. Mixed among the typical Chance cards are cards that allow a player to get a free ticket booth, which can entitle the player in some instances to confiscate the opponent's existing booth. It's a frustratingly random game, and I often find myself relieved as I start hemorrhaging money and the end approaches.

Yet boring as it is for me, I play with the Girl whenever she asks. As a husband and father, I no longer have a monopoly on my own time or interests.

Here [They] Come

Wednesday 31 July 2013 | 0 Comments

walkin’ down the street…

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Such a difference in how L plays here in the States versus Babcia’s place in Polska. With all the houses tightly packed in Babcia’s neighborhood, I could easily hear L just about anywhere she was. She’d developed a few little haunts, but they were all within earshot of the house. Here, I watch her as she walks up the street to her friend’s house, and his parents do the same when they return. It’s a busier street to begin with, but there’s also the eternal fear that sparks the almost cliche instructions, “Don’t talk to strangers.” In Polska, there were times that I didn’t really know where L was, but I wasn’t really worried about it. It’s not that there aren’t evil people in Polska, they just seem fewer and farther between. You don’t read news accounts of abductions and murders like you do here.

And so L and S would often strike out on their own, yelling to one of us on their way out where they were headed.