Even after a second day of sledding, this time in even colder weather, the Boy was ready for a bit of ice cream.
If only he could get it out…
the girl
First Snow 2017
Like most snow storms in the South, this one was the talk of news and neighbors for almost a week before it hit. The possibility of snow grew into the certainty of snow, and the depth of that certain snow increased as well. By the time I went to bed, meteorologists were predicting six inches for our area. That's like three feet of snow in northern climes -- something of note.
The kids grew increasingly excited as the projected storm's intensity promised to be greater and greater. E was squealing on a regular basis Friday night with excitement about the impending snow.
What we got in our area was somewhat more restrained, though. Probably an inch, maybe an inch and a half, of icy, hard snow greeted us this morning. The Boy was ready to go, though.
"I'm going to eat half a bagel for breakfast, then get dressed, then check the street, then go to R's house." By nine, he was out. Shortly after that, the Girl joined him. Shortly after that, the neighborhood joined them.
In the afternoon, with such a gorgeous blue sky, we had to go for a walk, and with the roads clearing, we decided to go to Conestee Park. Wearing his gum boots, the Boy had to walk through as many puddles as possible, and both of the kids had to grab, fling, kick, and toss every bit of snow possible. The result: two wet, tired kids. Exhausted.
Until we arrived back at the house and saw the neighborhood kids sledding. Amazing what that will do for one's energy.
Tree Lighting
Didn’t ever post this, I think.
New Year’s Eve
The Boy had a birthday party across the street. The Girl is having her birthday sleep over. I read a book, set off some fireworks. A good evening.
2016
Mope
We might be behind the times, so to speak, but K and I have been watching The Crown this week, and it seems there's quite a bit of moping in that film. Most obviously, there's Edward VIII, who gave up the crown in order to marry an American divorcee. The Duke of Windsor spends most of his screen time moping about this or that. He mopes about his allowance not being sufficient to entertain as he wishes. He mopes about how his family treats him -- they're all mad at him for the crisis he plunged the country into when he abdicated, but also they're probably a little angry about him being a fairly open Nazi sympathizer who even went to German in '37 and met Hitler. He mopes about how his wife won't be allowed to come to the coronation of Elizabeth. He mopes about the pageantry of the coronation as he mocks with with his friends while watching it on television. And he seems to mope about not being king as well.
Yet in all that moping about, there are some problems of lesser, moral men that he doesn't have to deal with. We don't see him moping about his sibling drawing a mustache on him as he slept. The Girl has taken to "mustaching" him at night, and while he thought it was funny at first, he no longer does.
"I hate mustaches!" he declared this morning.
I do, too. They always make a man seem a little creepy to me, a little less trustworthy. I wonder if the Duke of Windsor ever wore a mustache -- it might suit his personality. It certainly did Hitler's.
He probably never moped about having to clean up his room after a play date. The man probably never cleaned up anything in his entire life.
To E's credit, though, he didn't mope today about having to clean up his mess.
"But I didn't make it all!" he began, and I thought it was coming. The fuss. The mope. The crisis.
"Well, you should have asked your friends to help you clean up before they left."
"I did. And they didn't help."
"I'm sorry."
And that was about all there was to it. He cleaned up half the mess in the late afternoon and the other half just before bedtime, and he was calm the entire time. He might mope later in life about his allowance, but that's still a ways off.
The Duke of Windsor also never had to mope about a repetitive task like opening seemingly endless bags of chess pieces and putting them into draw-string bags. Since I have waited for that moment for ages -- getting chess sets for the chess club I sponsor at school, thanks to the generosity of the PTSA -- I didn't mope about it either.
I guess about the only thing I moped about today was all of the Duke of Windsor's moping...
Inspired by the Daily Post's prompt of the day: Mope.
Chores and Jobs
Chores -- the Girl unloads the dishwasher, the Boy sorts the silverware. Today, though, the Girl was in a hurry for him to finish so they could watch a little after-breakfast TV, so she was insistent on helping him. He, however, would have none of it.
"L, that's my job!"
The more restless she grew, the more insistent he became. I stood there watching, intervening as little as possible, a few disparate thoughts running about in my mind.
- The Boy is clearly proud of what he's doing and that it's his established job. He doesn't have a lot of responsibilities yet, and often his help, as cute as it is, is more trouble than help. This is one of the things he can do that actually is very helpful. I think he senses that and is proud of contributing to the family.
- He has a totally different outlook on work than the Girl. For her, chores are just that: something that must be done, something that is as inescapable as unenjoyable. The Boy, though, loves helping, loves working, loves getting involved. He plays at work: he digs in the backyard, pretends to mow, conducts culinary experiments on the small countertop beside the stove as we cook (which usually involves mixing random things from the fridge).
- Sometimes help comes from less-than-perfectly-altruistic motives. Sure, the end result was fine: the Girl wanted to help the Boy. But why? Still, that she finished her job and then wanted to help with his -- that's something.
- The thought of having my job (singular) is enviable for a lot of adults, I think -- and I'm including myself in that "a lot of". So there's an irony: kids look forward to being adults, and adults often look back wistfully at childhood. The truly happy individual is the one always happy where she is.
Backyard Free Time
Looking Forward
The Girl has a way of getting into something and being very passionate about something but then letting the fires die a little.
Will archery be the same? Is it important? We’re having fun now, spending time together, just enjoying it all.
Christmas 2016: Nostalgia
I'm not quite sure where they got it -- maybe we gave it to them, or perhaps they just bought it themselves. In a way it doesn't matter. What matters is that when E found the little Leap Frog play house that was just like the one he played with as a little toddler ("Daddy, I'm not a toddler any more. I'm a little boy."), he was utterly enchanted. He took the little house over to the small couch in the sitting area just off of the dining room in our friends' house (they do Christmas; we do Easter; another family has taken Halloween, even though it's not a traditional Polish holiday) and just played with it as if it were the greatest thing. I wondered for a moment if perhaps he was experiencing his first little bout of nostalgia.
I always wonder about that: what will set my kids off when they're adults, what will send them back into the past with a certainty that times were somehow better then and a strange emptiness with the realization that those times will never return. Or maybe that's just the stuff of romantics, and perhaps my kids won't grow up to be nostalgic romantics.
But there are worse things than being nostalgic romantics. Nostalgic romantics get to sing Christmas carols with an abandon that others lack. The act is a time machine.
It's what makes movies like White Christmas so charming almost seventy years later.
And that's all I've got for this Christmas...