“Can you read to me?” is a common refrain.
With two now, that means doubling up sometimes.
the girl
Tummy Time
As parents, we sometimes deliberately subject our children to discomfort, frustration, and anger. For the Boy, that occurs several times daily, and the Girl has named this torture “Tummy Time.”
“You have to exercise those neck muscles,” she explains as we did so often before. For the Girl, though, it’s more than simple entertainment: it’s a brief glimpse into her own infancy.
Perhaps that’s why she’s so keen to watch each and every time. She comes running from wherever she might be when she hears, “Okay, little man, it’s Tummy Time.”
Photo Walk
After the Boy's six o'clock feeding, nothing soothes his nerves (and K's) like a walk. Without K. Or the Girl. So the three of us head out alone, I with the Boy, the Girl with our little point and shoot camera.
It's a fairly standard route we take. Usually, the only question is direction, and in the late afternoon, the sun dictates counter-clockwise. And so we begin with the mysterious flowers that have been blooming for a week now and the daily request: "Daddy, can I pick a flower?" The bush hangs over an embankment, with thorns and danger swirling around it.
"How about a picture?" I suggest.
"Okay," she chirps, then explains that today, she's going to focus on pictures of nature.
Yet when we get home, we see that there was another motif that crept its way steadily into the eighty-some pictures she snapped along the half-hour walk: the road.
Endless pictures of the road. The road and the grass beside; the road and our feet; the road and her foot; the road with crumbling asphalt; the road with new asphalt; the road without lines; the road with lines.
"Why so many pictures of the road?" I want to ask, but I know the answer. "I don't know."
I remember taking pictures that way: not really sure why I was taking that particular picture, but somehow certain that the photo would reveal something not immediately observable in reality.
After all, isn't that the motivation behind most modern art? If Marcel Duchamp can display a signed urinal as modern art, isn't a food processor on the side of the road at least as deserving of artistic attention?
Surely, at the very least, a dog's urinal is art.
Afternoon with Big Sister
I put the Boy on a small sleeping bag the Girl has spread out in front of her doll house. As often happens, things turn photogenic.
Waking Up
“Let’s go wake up Big Sister,” I say to the Boy as he fusses this morning.
Soon, everyone is smiling.
Knight Study
"Daddy, can we play chess?" the Girl asks almost daily now. She's learning -- slow steps -- but her enjoyment of the game is most gratifying. Today: knight study.
"Put a pawn at each square this knight is attacking," I say. She forms the circular pattern around the knight.
"Notice," I continue, "that the knight is on a white square but is attacking all black squares." I hope this will help her complete the exercise, but we end up getting pawns on random black squares in a few moments.
I suppose the next lesson -- moving the knight to the edge of the board to show how its power is effectively halved in doing so, proving the old adage, "A knight on the rim is grim" -- will have to wait.
Fascination
It’s a good sign: the Girl is utterly fascinated with the Boy. “I want to hold him!” is a common refrain. “That’s so cute!” is a frequent chorus.
The question is, how long will it last?
Swimming and Resting
We’ve come a long way in the last couple of years. The Girl swims; the Boy is; and I’m still expanding.
Early Summer
We have a new child in the house, and I'm barely updating. I could make excuses.
We're too busy taking walks:
Backyard twirling sessions have taken up all of our time:
Testing new snorkeling equipment has eaten into our time:
We've been busy jumping into the water:
We've been learning to drive a stick:
Lots of excuses; none of them convincing.
Backyard Safari
The professor was terribly kind to give me a job as her assistant on her great exploratory backyard safari.
We had an important mission, a mission of discovery in lands of danger.
First up, the incredibly rare Knockout Rose. The professor discovered that it was possible to determine where old blossoms had been.
It was an important scientific development, but not nearly as important as the realization that “roses provide bees.” So important was this new scientific understanding that the professor decided to make a short note of it in her special notebook.
Yet nature is full of surprises, like sleeping lightening bugs,
and mushrooms growing under a stand of Leyland Cypresses.
My job was simple: do whatever the professor required. I held the sample case and made a record of each location the professor took a sample.
What was best was all the free lectures I received. The professor is a generous teacher, and she explained many mysteries as we wandered about our backyard and the neighbor’s.
Throughout the day, the professor also conducted experiments. Finding a seed pod from a sweet gum tree, she made a most scientific declaration. “My hypothesis is that it won’t float,” she declared, marching over to the small stream that forms our lower property line.
She tossed it in, watched it bob about, then summarized the experiment with true scientific objectivity: “My hypothesis was wrong.”
“That provides water from the toilet.”
But some of the time, the professor simply observed.
“What about pay?” I asked, knowing I’d already been paid many times over by just being present with her.
“Well, we can pick some berries,” she replied.