Matching Tracksuits

the girl

Snow

Sunday 9 December 2018

A snowy Sunday morning really has to start with bacon, eggs, and a couple of cinnamon buns. The long-awaited snow arrived, beginning last night, and we were all excited to see white outside in the morning.

As is the case more often than not when we finally do get snow, there was not much of it to speak of. Wet and heavy, it sat on the yard with blades of grass sticking up almost everywhere.

The kids were eager to get out as soon as possible, especially E.

“Let’s make a snow fort!” he squealed.

“I don’t think it’s good snow for that,” K tried to explain. “It’s too wet. Wet, wet, wet,” she said, but E wasn’t convinced. What six-year-old living in South Carolina would be? Snow is snow is snow.

We had similar a year ago:

Slush

Heading out, we discovered the freezing mix that followed it had coated most everything with a layer of ice, leaving K to worry if her rosemary bush, which seems indestructible, might indeed finally die. But there were more important things, like a dog that was thrilled to be in the snow and two kids almost as excited.

We decided to head out and see what the neighborhood looked like. Part of that was to gauge how K might make it to work tomorrow and part of it was to estimate whether we’d be heading back to school on Wednesday or Thursday.

Monday and Tuesday, we knew, would be a wash. The temperature is supposed to drop Monday night, leaving everything an even slicker mess, and even if it didn’t, our county is huge, running up into the foothills up north. Even if it’s passable here, it’s not there.

Our exploring showed us that we weren’t the only ones out: there were a few tracks left behind by brave souls — tongue in cheek there — who went out in the snow (which was more slush than anything on the road and entirely drive-able), and we encountered a couple returning home with staples in hand — beer and chips.

The Boy, golf club in hand, enjoyed exploring all the places the slush looked like ice. He slapped and swung at every slushy puddle he saw.

The Girl was thrilled to have the dog in tow.

In the evening, K made the pierogi and uszka we’ll be having Christmas Eve. The Boy got to play with some dough, and I was given the boot since I don’t work well with perogi, K in formed me.

Wednesday Evening

Wednesday 5 December 2018

Math homework with the Girl; Christmas cards with the Boy; toys with Clover.

Family Game

Tuesday 4 December 2018

We had a little family game time this evening. L came downstairs and asked if we could play Forbidden Island or whatever that game that has a 15+ page instruction book is called. I’d laughed at the rules earlier when L and K were trying to figure it out: three different decks of cards (or is it four), multiple little things you can do, a turn that seems to last forever — it just seemed overly complicated.

Tonight, I sat down with them and let them explain it. Fairly simple when it comes down to it — I guess I just wasn’t willing to do the work at the beginning, digging through the instructions and figuring it out.

It’s interesting in that instead of playing against the other players, you’re all trying to accomplish the same goal. Cooperation instead of competition.

A great way to spend the evening.

The Last Few Days

Friday 30 November 2018

The Boy has been watching the Netflix series Extraordinary Houses. He loves it. Loves it. He’s started designing houses in his free time.

The Girl has been getting into math that requires assistance. K is only too happy to help.

Thanksgiving 2018

Thursday 22 November 2018

The day began with the relatively new Thanksgiving tradition: K and L went to Mass at the church we used to attend (which we still attend once a month for Polish mass, said now for a couple of years in English by a Columbian priest) for the parish’s special Thanksgiving Mass. The choir sings portions of the Mass in English, portions in Spanish, portions in Polish, and portions in Tagalog. As they do for any special Mass, the girls dressed in traditional Polish Highlander clothes.

While the girls were gone, the Boy continued with his help.

We prepared the turkey, made the requisite casserole, made the dressing, cooked the giblet gravy, and then baked it all. Except for the gravy.

We packed everything up and headed over to Nana’s and Papa’s for a quiet late lunch/early dinner. Everyone said it was delicious, but I wasn’t entirely satisfied with what I delivered.

  • The dressing was a disaster: too much liquid. I forgot to figure the fact that I’d added orange wedges and cranberries, which released a ridiculous amount of liquid.
  • The cranberry sauce was a bit too sour for my taste. I’d cut the recipe’s sugar requirement by about 30%, thinking, “American recipes are always too sweet.” Perhaps not. It wasn’t as much of a failure as the dressing, but I’ve made better.
  • The turkey probably could have cooked a bit longer. It was done, but it clung to the bone just a bit too much. A half an hour more would have made it better, I think, without overdoing it.
  • The syrup for the baklava was just a touch too thick. It didn’t entirely absorb into the fillo dough — at least not like I like it. It wasn’t bad, perse, but it could have been just a little better.

Still, we’re always a little too hard on ourselves. K pointed out that we could simply bake the dressing a little longer tomorrow. The cranberry sauce was perfect for her. The kids devoured the turkey. And even I can’t really complain about the baklava. I just wanted a fourth bullet point for that list for some reason.

Thanksgiving Eve Vingette

Wednesday 21 November 2018

“Can you do this?” E asked as he hung upside down from the net ladder at the jungle gym.

“That’s easy,” said the young stranger who’d joined us. His mother had pulled up right at the jungle gym and sat in the car, likely swiping endlessly on her phone.

Thus began the game of “Can you do this?” that lasted for the duration of the time the two boys played together. To everything that E asked, the other boy replied, “Oh, that’s easy.” To most of the things the other boy asked, E replied, “No, not yet.” In a final effort to have something that the other boy couldn’t do, E asked if he could leap from this part of the jungle gym to that. He shook his head.

“My sister can,” the Boy said proudly.

Monday Afternoon and Evening

Monday 19 November 2018

When I got home, E was ready for some basketball practice. We don’t have a basketball goal, and there’s really no place we could put one, so that limits our play to some degree. Fortunately, he’s happy just to practice the basics: chest passes, bounce passes, and a bit of dribbling.

Sometimes K and I worry about his self-confidence, but at times, it seems he has a bit too much. “I’m already very good at dribbling!” he proclaimed as he slapped at the basketball. Certainly, in comparison to what he was doing a couple of weeks ago, he’s much better. But has he, as he insists, almost mastered it? So I have this fine balance to walk with him: keep him realistic but not crush his spirit.

“You’re much better than you were,” I said, “but there’s always room for improvement.”

“Well, yeah,” he said, “of course there’s always room for improvement.”

We took a little break to look at a few unusual clouds. One, in particular, looked as if Bob Ross had taken one of his wide, fan brushes and made a few strokes of Titanium White on Phthalo Blue.

After dinner, we played with his Legos. He took the Millennium Falcon set that he’d completed Sunday, tore it apart, and built something new from it. It’s a common thing he does: follow the directions, build everything in the set, then never build it again. That’s what Legos are for, I suppose.

When it came time for E to work with K on a little homework, I went up to see what the Girl was doing.

“Watching YouTube.” That’s how she spends most of her screen time these days. She watches DIY’ers and slime makers, but more and more, she watches more mature things. Like how to do makeup. She’s growing up.

“Want to play a game?” I asked. “Your choice.” But it really wasn’t. There were a couple of games that I nixed immediately. One, because I don’t even understand how to play it. A board game that has ten plus pages of instructions is not something I have the patience to learn. The other, well, I don’t really understand it either. We settled on Kerplunk, a game that takes longer to set up than to play.

I noticed how different we are regarding our sense of organization. The Girl wanted to segregate all the straws by color and then put them in the cylinder layered by colors, and she wanted the marbles segregated to the same ends. As she pulled out straws, she placed them in color-sorted piles. I, on the other hand, wanted the straws placed as chaotically as possible, and my pulled straws — just tossed in a pile.

After she beat me twice, I said, “Well, that’s fine. But you still won’t get me in chess.”

“Yes, I can beat you!” she cried and headed downstairs to get the chess set. I beat her, but she has improved so much that it’s difficult to believe. Her development followed tried-and-true principles (which is not to say “theoretical principles”–we haven’t talked about openings themselves, only the idea of getting out your minor pieces, castling, and connecting your rooks as basic opening development), and she saw clearly several threats a couple of moves away. As the game concluded, I showed her what backline mate threats are, how to anticipate them, and how to avoid them.

A perfect evening, in other words.

Monday Evening Walk

Monday 29 October 2018

Our schedule has calmed down significantly: no longer do we have something each and every evening. Soccer — done. Volleyball — done. We’ve decided, as a result of having so much free time (relatively speaking), to make Monday evenings (and possibly Tuesday nights, but not this week — that frantic pace has ripples that spill over to this week) family walk evenings. So today, after dinner, we took the dog and headed to Conestee Park, our favorite local park.

E and I rode our bikes there yesterday, almost achieving our goal of riding on every bit of trail and/or road (a total of 10.2 km), and we discovered a couple of new trails that we thought we’d introduce the girls to.

The kids took turns with the dog, each handling her for a quarter of a mile (thanks, Fitbit).

And we got a chance to get a family portrait, albeit divided into two stages: the Boy wanted the camera and decided we didn’t have enough pictures of me, so he made me pose.

Finally, he wanted one of K and me. “You need to stand there and kiss.”

Last Games of the Season

Saturday 20 October 2018

The Boy had his final soccer game of the season. It was bitter-sweet: his team finished undefeated, but it was the last season they will train under Coach Kevin, who accepted a position coaching a high school girls’ team.

The Girl’s team got what it dished out the other everning — a 3-0 defeat. She was upset about it, but only until we got home.

Volleyball

Thursday 18 October 2018

As a parent watching my daughter play volleyball, I always have some mixed emotions. During the last season, her team struggled mightily: they didn’t win a single match, if memory serves, and they only won a handful of sets. It was rough. Lots of frustration in the car after games.

“We won’t ever win.”

In several matches, they were swept, three sets to nothing. There was nothing immediately redeemable about that. I said what any parent would say: “You’re getting stronger.” “This is building character.” “This shows how tough you are, that you keep at it despite the challenges.”

This year has been different. They’ve won many more than they’ve lost, and they’ve handed out a couple of 3-0 sweeps themselves. It’s great to see the Girl so happy, so excited about what’s going on.

But I sometimes secretly cheer for the other team.

Tonight, they faced a team that they had already demolished once this year. I’m sure the coach has the best intentions, but from what I saw of the girls’ play, he doesn’t have the most experience with volleyball: his girls made basic mistakes in fundamental skills, mistakes that could easily be corrected. Mistakes that our coach has corrected. So these girls are losing through no fault of their own: they just don’t have someone to teach them how to pass and to serve properly.

The first game this evening began unevenly, and it became clear that our girls would win fairly easily, which they did, 25-15. Their opponents came out on the court excited, and they never  lost hope, but as I watched them, I really didn’t think they had a chance that game because our girls were out-scoring them 2-1 through most of the game. It was impressive, those girls’ enthusiasm. I found myself thinking, “They might not have won a match all year, might have won only a few sets, but they keep playing and smiling and encouraging each other.”

The second game began like the first and coincidentally ended with the same score.

The third game started, and I wished only one thing: for those sweet, energetic girls to win one. And they came so close. They clawed back from a 14-8 deficit to tie it at 14. That’s six consecutive game points. They were so excited. They were so ready to win.

The score went back and forth, back and forth, but in the end, our best server came up and nailed the final point: 18-16.

Our girls were thrilled. I was happy for L and everyone on her team. But for that third game, I was a total, secret fan of that other team.

Michael Arrives

Thursday 11 October 2018

K and I woke at three in the morning to the sound of the most torrential rainfall we’ve ever heard here. It was as if an enormous tap had been situated above our house and turned on fully. Assuming it was the first rains of Hurricane Michael. “I guess this will be what we go through for the next several hours,” I thought.

I began imagining what that might mean. “Our sump pump will get its first real test,” I thought.

At six, I woke. The Boy had woken and shuffled down the hall toward the kitchen. K guided him to our bed. “Go back to see, E,” she instructed, “you don’t have school today.”

The wind, the rain — the school board (or whoever makes the decision) decided it was too much of a risk. K told us when she got back from work that it was indeed a wise choice: “There were just sheets of rain, with no visibility.”

As for the rain of three in the morning — it never really re-materialized. It rained, quite heavily at times, but only until about eleven. Once it calmed a bit, the Boy and I headed out for inspection. And a bit of play.

In the afternoon, muffins.

As part of a literacy project from school, the Boy had to read and follow a recipe with a little help from me.

Wednesday Evening Vignettes

Wednesday 10 October 2018

In a flash, the cherry tomatoes were rolling across the concrete floor like greased bearings — E had been unloading the shopping cart when, in a moment of slightly careless abandon, the container of tomatoes crashed into the side of the buggy as he was lifting them out, then crashed to the floor.

“It was an accident!” he said, looking up at me.

“Well, clean up the accident, then.”

He began picking up the tomatoes and hustling them to a garbage can. Behind us, a mother and her daughter, probably around four, stood watching. When E returned for another load, the little girl walked over and began picking up tomatoes with him.

When we returned home, K and L were in the midst of figuring out a new board game. Well, not quite a board game — there’s no board to speak of. Still, a game. An exceedingly complicated game. With multiple decks of cards. And two different sets of tokens. And so many rules to remember that it seemed impossible that a human could keep that many exceptions in her mind at once.

Of course, I started making silly comments.

L, very much wanting to play, naturally got a little irritated with my silliness.

E, content to entertain himself, worked with Legos as all this went on.

And K, determined to make it through all the instructions — a multi-page book, mind you, not just a few short paragraphs on the underside of the box — kept explaining the game to us.

“We have fifteen minutes before it’s E’s bedtime,” K said. “We have a little time to play.” Between all the complicated rules and steps, everyone got a single turn in those fifteen minutes.

Volleyball

Sunday 30 September 2018

The Polish men’s team won the world championship today; the Girl is working to reach that level.