Dadblog

teaching moment

The family visited the old college campus yesterday to meet an old friend. While walking the grounds, Alex asked me if you had to take math as a student. I told her that it's probably different now, but when I was a student I took linguistics to get out of a math requirement, and it was a total farce that I regretted now.

"What's linguistics?" she asked. I explained that it's the study of language, but most of the tests were really just simple grammar exercises, and anyone who could recognize whether "I bringed my lunch" or "I brought my lunch" had a good chance of doing well in this class. This called to mind one day when the professor was discussing the "sph" phoneme, and how "sphere" was the only example in English.

I told Alex that I immediately thought of the word "sphincter" but didn't want to draw attention to myself.

"What's a sphincter?" she asked.

I paused, aimed and poked. Alex yelled "YIIIIIIIIiiiiiiIIII!!"

Andrew perked up. "What? What did you say?"

"Alex wanted to know what a sphincter was."

"What IS it?"

"TELL HIM, DAD!"

expanding boundaries

Earlier this year, while I was off at a baseball game, Alex told her mother that she wanted to go for a walk around the neighborhood. Rachel assented, reminding Alex to be home for dinner.

Dinnertime came, but Alex wasn't back yet. 

Rachel later described the feeling of having the quick-to-freak-out neighbors on one shoulder, whispering in her ear about abductions and hit-and-run car accidents. On the other shoulder sat her husband, perusing actuarial tables, rolling his eyes and citing risk management blogs. (For the record, the phenomenon of confusing what is possible with what is likely is known as the availability heuristic.) Rachel sweated a little bit but didn't panic, and of course Alex eventually came strolling in the house, feeling very guilty about having abused the trust placed in her.

She had walked about half a mile, crossed over Route 1 into Philadelphia, bought some water ice for her and her siblings and come home. She started to blubber a little bit as she confessed to Rachel.

Rachel gave Alex a short "disappointed" speech and left it alone. She did admit, grudgingly, that it was pretty cool all the same that Alex was able to make the trip on her own, even if it was irresponsible of her to cross that street and not tell anyone where she was going.

I was given orders later that night to keep any mission-confusing praise for my daughter to myself.

Last night, Alex and Myrtle were hanging out in between our houses. Myrtle's mom was trying to find them to let them know dinner was ready. She came over to ask if we'd seen them. Rachel thought they were outside, but Myrtle's mom hadn't seen them. Rachel looked upstairs and in the basement, but they were not in our house. 

Myrtle's mom started to call out, "MYYYYRRTLE!"  MYYYYRRRRTLE!" Her voice had a catch to it. 

Rachel asked me over by the barbecue grill if I knew where the girls were. I said I had promised not to tell, but they'd gone to 69th street to hear Myrtle's boyfriend's band. 

Rachel smiled and said, yeah, I figured you'd say that.

"Dude's got a mustache like THIS," I said, holding my hands out for emphasis.

It turns out the girls were up in Myrtle's bedroom where the AC rattled so loud they hadn't heard the call. 

When Alex called to ask if she could sleep over, I told her what I'd said. She told Myrtle's dad, and he said the mustache is more of a handlebar style.

eyes vs stomach

Alex got the lead role in the fifth grade play in May. A classmate of hers told me that if you want to measure the relative importance of the roles, you count the number of lines, and Alex has the most of anyone. So hooray for Alex - I am pleased that the music teacher trusts her with this responsibility.

Alex also is auditioning for a role in Seussical, to be put on by our local kids theater workshop in June. She came home from try outs last night so pumped that she volunteered "it went great!" as she walked in the door. This is significant, coming from my daughter, who normally keeps information like this very, very close.

I am most pleased that Alex is confident and successful. I do wonder, though, how a child who dislikes memorizing things is going to handle two performances in one season. She only just has a grasp on her times tables.

Who believes in Santa?

Andrew says his pal Raza told him that Santa must be a fraud because Raza's mom was seen putting out presents that were supposed to be from the guy in the red suit. Andrew told this to Rachel as a way of getting used to the unsettling idea that Raza might be right. 

Alex knows the score, but then Alex spent almost two years of her life obsessed with ancient Egyptian culture, which is a great way to introduce kids to the idea that sometimes people believe in things that aren't real. Elizabeth probably believes in Santa, but only because it's so convenient. She would rather not believe in Dr. Blum, the dentist. 

Rachel told me last night that some friends in the neighborhood pay $60 a year to have Santa telephone their house on Christmas Eve and talk to their kids. Santa knows the names of thier friends, pets and teachers, and creepily, what the kids might need to improve about their own behavior. The call leaves the children with a mix of wonder and shame, but very compliant with Santa's instructions to go straight to bed that night after church. 

play it cool

Alex auditioned for a lead role in the 5th grade play today. She decided not to have a plan B, even though kids were encouraged to try out for two roles, figuring if she didn't get the part she tried out for, the teacher would stick her someplace appropriate. I heard about this from Rachel, who reported that she said "Good luck, you're terrific, I'm sure you'll be great and if you don't get the part we'll still love you anyway." But what she was thinking was "Don't you think you ought to prepare two parts?"

My reaction was that Alex has a very even temperament, and would not be devastated if the part she wanted went to someone else. That's like me. But there's also something a little bit lazy about only preparing the one piece, and convincing yourself you don't care if you get it or not. That's like me too.

There's a danger in identifying too much with your kids. You can suffer all their slings and arrows along with them - and really, who needs to be an adolescent twice in one life? You can get all involved in their business, telling them what to do, how to do it and bully them out of the way of their own lives. But it's really hard to just stand back and let stuff happen, even when you know, with all the wisdom of your accumulated years, the right thing to do.

you don't say

Alex picked up two odd speaking habits recently. I'm trying (softly) to get her to drop them.

The first is speaking of herself in the third person. "Alex would like soymilk, please" is the answer to "Alex, what would you like to drink with dinner?" The second is confirming the obvious. "You're frosting cupcakes?", Alex will say to a person smearing frosting on cupcakes with a spatula. It's a conversation starter, I recognize, but a strange one. And it brings out my sarcastic side.

To her credit, Alex is doing a better job of losing the Philadelphia regional quirk that drives me and Rachel to distraction: dropping the "with" in "done [with] [activity]." Andrew and Elizabeth are acquiring that habit now, which sounds like this:

"I'm done my homework."
"Can I pull out the cushions if I'm done my lunch?"

To which Rachel and I start chanting "With! With! WITH!"

you can't say that

Alex is a lot like I was as a kid. She reads a lot of books like I did, some well beyond the emotional experience of a ten year old. For her most recent book report, she read a book about a mother who slammed her fist on the dinner table, announced she was leaving, got on a bus to see her own mother and died in a fiery crash. The daughter in the book then heads west to see Grandma herself and make some sense of what happened.

Unlike ten-year-old me, Alex finished her book report two weeks early. She got some of her mothers good genes too.

In her book report, Alex tried to describe her personal reaction to the book, which she said was buoyed by similar events in her own life. To which Rachel replied, what the hell? Alex explained to Rachel that it's true that she had experienced the death of a cat when she was eight, and a previous cat when she was still a toddler, and there was an elderly relative too...but mostly, Alex said, "teachers love that kind of thing."

Rachel told me with some concern that perhaps Alex is heartless and manipulative. I reassured her that I didn't learn to process big emotion until I was much older than Alex is now, and that if she knows how to write for her audience, then that's an important skill.

I also agreed that it would be okay to send a note in to Alex's teacher advising her that Alex does not actually have a traumatic back story, and that Rachel has yet to run away.

giddy pt 1

Alex survived her all-nighter on Thursday. I used all my yogic powers to force myself to sleep at 9:30 pm, but I slept fitfully and woke many times over the next few hours. Finally at 2:40 I got up, jumped in the shower, went downstairs and interrupted Rachel and Alex working on a jigsaw puzzle on the dining room table. Rachel stayed up to put a few more pieces in, then went to bed. Her parting advice was to keep switching up activities.I brewed a pot of coffee.

At 3:15, when Alex seemed like she was having a hard time blinking her eyes in unison, I suggested a walk around the neighborhood. We headed over towards the park, hoping to spot some deer. We did hear a few airplanes, but otherwise everything was totally silent. I tried to interest Alex in a lesson about how the overnight freight business worked, but she didn't seem all that invested in the conversation.

The cat stayed up with us, but was clearly annoyed. She kept slapping at my back with her paws.

After a two mile loop, we came home and watched the first half of the first "Lord of the Rings" movie. Somewhere around the two hour mark, when Alex looked sketchy again, we launched another walking expedition, this time to 7-11 for half and half. The guy behind the counter didn't act like we were anything remarkable, but I guess seeing humans walk around when most people sleep lost its novelty some time ago for him. On the way home, it was unclear whether our running joke about Alex's hallucinations was still a joke or not.

At 6:00 am, we put the cinnamon buns that Alex and Rachel had started into the oven. They were ready just in time for us to leave for the hospital for a 7:30 appointment.

To Be Continued...

zoom

I took Alex to the library after dinner to pick up a reserved copy of the latest book in whatever series she's reading. She also asked me to help her find a book we'd enjoyed together two years ago. I read a chapter of Circle of Doom to her every night when she was in third grade.

As I was helping to wind up the bathtime business for Andrew and Elizabeth last night, I heard Alex sitting in the back room, giggling. I looked in, expecting to find her watching inane Harry Potter Parodies on YouTube but instead she was on the couch, clutching her chin, laughing at Circle of Doom.

And then, by 8:45 pm, she was done with the entire book.

"Did you skim? Skip chapters?"

"No, it's just so good I can't stop or slow down."

condensed milk of human kindness

Alex is spending the week with my parents in Connecticut. So far, they've taken her fishing at the state park in Redding, to a VIP tour of the Bronx Zoo, to a Beatles reenactment concert in Bridgeport, and today they are going to the Seaport in Mystic. At night they do puzzles, build crafts (yesterday: rain stick out of cardboard tubes, nails and beans), and watch baseball and the Olympics on TV. Then she gets to read late into the night. We get her home this Sunday.

She calls home every night around 8:45. At first she sounded faint and wistful, but now she's got her high spirits back. I rheard her tell a friend that the first two nights are the hardest - the seeing parents drive away part especially - but then you adapt. She's a wise girl for her age. I knew some college freshmen who had a much harder time with separation than she does.

As part of a general makeup to Andrew, Rachel and I are taking him to a Phillies game tonight. As long as we bring home some cotton candy for Elizabeth, she is fine not going. Last night she told me that she likes when the Phillies win, but she doesn't care when they lose. We hired her favorite babysitter - the one who likes to host tea parties with stuffed animals - to keep her company while we're out of the house. Typically, Andrew is now concerned that he might be missing out.

Yesterday, Rachel took Elizabeth to the eye doctor for her annual checkup. She is at risk for glaucoma, so she gets her pressure checked every year. It's never easy to convince Elizabeth to submit to even noninvasive procedures, so getting her to allow the big nosed medical student to stick his pin in her eye was a very difficult sell. Rachel said "we could hold her down, but that would shoot her pressure way up." I got a call on my cell to try and deliver a remote pep talk, but poor Liz was still sad. She proclaimed it unfair. "How come I have to get my eyes checked and Andrew doesn't? I wish ANDREW was here!!"

Later, Andrew saw the conciliatory chocolate wrappers in the back seat and yelled "HEY!!!" Poor kid, he's always getting screwed out of something.

Next year, Andrew will be old enough for Camp Grandma.