“Griffin, did you just pick your nose and put it in my ear???”
“Yeah, I did do that.”
All posts by Andrew
Chutes & Ladders
Sarah found this amazing park shortly after we first moved here last year but it was too sophisticated for Griffin. This fall, with winter fast approaching, Griffin was able to give it a shot. He was slow and cautious at first, but quickly developed confidence and new climbing skills. It was amazing to watch him learning how to handle himself on the massive play structure. He quickly dubbed it the “super duper park.” The official name is the Hyland Play Area, but most people refer to it simply as “Chutes & Ladders.” The photos below are from our last trip on October 29, and the video is from an earlier trip on the 15th.
First Snow
The first snow of the season arrived today. Unlike last year’s opening blizzard (which dumped 8 inches overnight), this is a mellow snowfall, which should max out at 3 inches. Sarah and Griffin are missing it while they galivant around the Bay Area, but I suspect there will be plenty more white stuff to play in when they return.
Old Man Griffin
Text message from Sarah in California:
Sleeping with G is like sleeping with a freaking flying walinda. Made it til 5 or so but he just had a poop on the potty! He said, “My poop’s hard. I need fiber.”
The Eighth Wonder of the World
Just an hour from the Twin Cities lies a site that is definitely cooler than the Colossus, more magnificent than the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (who’s heard of that anyway?), and nearly as charged with New Age Energy as the Great Pyramid. Plus it is toddler-friendly, has pink picnic tables, and is totally entirely FREE.
See for yourself:
At first glance this mid-size, older model fridge might not appear to be in the same class as the Hanging Gardens, but look more closely:
Are you kidding me? In post-Jerry-Garcia America there’s an unlocked, unattended refrigerator filled with Freezee Pops and a “Suggested Donation” sign? Even after wandering the rest of this amazing, soul-salving site, I think this fridge did the most to reaffirm my faith in humanity.
Ok, enough shenanigans. It’s taken me a while to post the pics, but earlier this month we drove out to the Franconia Sculpture Park with Griffin and had a fabulous day. For those of you not in the know, it’s a 20-acre site in the middle of nowhere (by urban standards—cornfields all ’round), filled with incredible, humongous modern sculpture. Places like this make Minnesota oh-so-easy to fall in love with.
Here are some of our favorite pictures. Click to expand.
Cordes sur Ciel
The luggage incident was, of course, only a small part of our time in France. This was the second part of our Fabulous European Wedding Tour, and it was my (Andrew’s) first time in France. We were staying just outside of a small town called Cordes sur Ciel (built in 1222, perched on a hill, cooler than cool) about an hour from Toulouse in southern France.
When we were planning the trip my good friend James, the groom, knew that we were on a very tight budget, so he kindly suggested that we could stay in the neighbor’s “pigeonier.” I looked up the word and discovered that a pigeonier is more commonly known, in English, as a “dovecote.” Those of us who don’t live on a rural manor might still need a bit of help; according to Merriam-Webster, a dovecote is
A small compartmented raised house or box for domestic pigeons.
Hmm. I took James up on the offer, but wasn’t quite sure what we were getting into.
It turned out that the neighbors in question were stone-masons and had built the pigeonier as a guest-house. It was a four story stone tower with a full kitchen, living room, bath, and gorgeous bedroom at the apex (where the pigeons would have lived had it been a real pigeonier). Pretty awesome.
See many pictures from our trip below (click to enlarge).
Cinque Terre
We started the summer off with a bang this year and it all still feels a bit like a dream.
In a bizarre turn of events, we were invited to TWO weddings in Europe this summer that happened to be one week apart and relatively close to each other physically. The first was in the south of France, not far from Toulouse. The other was in Umbria in central Italy. As part of our policy of doing things that seem impossible (like the road trip to Minnesota with a one-year-old last summer), Sarah and I committed to going and have been working hard all year to make it happen. On June 11 (the day after my duties at school ended) we boarded a plane for Rome!
Our trip divided neatly into three sections:
- We spent our first four nights in Vernazza, part of the Cinque Terre in northwest Italy. We were on our own here, getting over jetlag and getting used to the rhythm of travel with a toddler.
- Then we flew to Cordes sur Ciel in southern France for James and Eliza’s wedding where we stayed in an ultra-cool pigeon coop.
- Finally we spent a week in Macerino, Umbria, for Tyler and Mieka’s wedding.
So as not to overwhelm everybody we’ve divided our photos into three sets to fit with these divisions. This blog entry highlights the first part of the trip, including a few of our favorite photos. Click on any of the photos to see the complete photo album with many more fabulous pictures.
Aside from the pictures, some favorite memories included:
- After 22 hours of travel we arrived in Vernazza with little to no sleep. Even with our exhaustion, we were amazed by the town: steep terraced hills, buildings piled on top of each other, vivid colors, staircase “streets”, and a cool breeze blowing in from the Ligurian Sea. We tossed our luggage into our tiny one-room apartment and walked to the waterfront for some pizza and a view of the sunset. Afterwards we all slept for twelve solid hours. (Griffin was great with sleep; we haven’t shared a room with him since co-sleeping as an infant so we were worried.)
- On our first day, Griffin awoke from his nap to say, loudly, “Go to the beach? Ok!” (He’s got this thing right now where he poses his favorite ideas as questions and then immediately says “Ok!” as if granting himself permission.) He loved the beach, laughing at the waves, covering himself with sand, and splashing in the water. His tiny little body would get SO cold, though, that we often had to take breaks so that he could return to a normal color.
- Vernazza is a town of amazing views. As mentioned above, the streets are all super-narrow, and usually steep. (No cars allowed, since they can’t fit.) Suddenly you will pop around a corner and find a breathtaking vista where you could see much of the town arrayed beneath you (and the terraced vineyards continuing to climb into the sky). We loved the pace of life where we could just wander around, enjoying the views, sampling the food, and splashing at the beach.
- We were all mesmerized by the trains. There are two tracks passing through town, but for the most part they are in tunnels in the mountains. The town’s platform is tiny with buildings all around it. Only two or three train cars actually fit on the outdoor platform, so most of the train is in the tunnel on either side when it stops. It’s a bit spooky having to walk through the dark to get on or off the front or rear cars. Many trains on these tracks don’t stop at the small town either, and so they come roaring through at full speed. Before you can hear or see them, a cold wind starts blowing from the tunnel. Everyone grabs their hats, and then the thing comes blazing past, vanishing into the next tunnel. Over the beach there is an expanse of track where the trains are visible again, high up on a masonry wall. Something about the combination of medieval architecture and the constant trains whipping by reminded me of Miyazaki films with their eclectic mix of technology and magic.
Ethiopian Hair
I often work late at school and my desk is somewhat out of sight so I sometimes overhear students talking about things Not Meant for Teacher Ears. Usually this merely piques my anthropological interest. Occasionally, however, I overhear something that requires intervention. Or not. Consider a recent incident:
My grading trance is interrupted by an unknown boy saying sarcastically to another, “Your hair looks like Ethiopia!” Sigh… I’m not sure what this means, but it can’t be good — somewhere on the spectrum from ignorantly inappropriate to overtly racist. The student repeats it, louder, “Seriously, your hair looks like ETHIOPIA!” The other student makes an unintelligible, but baffled-sounding response, while I get up and head to the commons with my stern face. As I round the bend, he repeats it a third time, “Your hair really looks like Ethiopia…” I’m surprised to see a seventh grader who didn’t strike me as the type to say this sort of thing — he’s a sophisticated, culturally sensitive boy. I open my mouth, preparing to Summon him to a Conversation, when he continues, “…see, it’s kinda round here and has a thing sticking out on the right, just like we learned in geography!” I close my mouth and they walk onward, discussing the shape of Ethiopia and other nearby countries.
Winter is Underrated
We’re in the dregs of winter these days—below freezing most nights, relatively warm most days with rain more frequent than snow. Additional snow, which we expect, has lost its ability to intimidate (unless you live in a flood zone). Our formerly unassailable snowpack is melting daily, revealing bedraggled lawns, silty sidewalks and forgotten snowman accessories. It’s messy, wet, and muddy. The remaining snow (of which there is still a good bit) is crusty and dingy gray.
As much as I am looking forward to the beauty and warmth of spring and summer, I will truly miss winter. It feels like sacrilege to say this around here (where everybody is completely sick of it), but I loved the snowy coldness of it all. My pre-dawn walk to work in the bitter cold has been one of my most treasured times of day. For one thing, it is stunningly beautiful outside. It is dark, but the snow reflects so much light that it never feels gloomy. After a fresh snowfall, everything is white, even the middle of the street. All the urban grime is replaced with glittering silver. As I trudge through the sidewalk canyons, flanked by thigh- or shoulder-high snowbanks, my inner geek goes wild: I’m listening for Mr. Tumnus in Narnia or avoiding storm troopers on Hoth. (Little do my students know that “Mr. Roy” regularly takes out imperial AT-ATs with his lightsaber before school.) If I’m lucky enough to catch the moon still up, I get the visual treat of moonlight through ice-limned branches—the light refracts in such a way to make the straight branches look like they bend to encircle the moon.
On these walks I am often surprised by how life-affirming this dead time of year is. No matter how dark and cold it is, there are always rabbit prints in the snow ahead of mine, and often the rabbits themselves. What do they eat? I have no idea. Then, as the eastern stars fade away, the birds start emerging. That just boggles my mind—how is it possible that the tiny, delicate things don’t freeze solid overnight? But they’re out, chirping happily and heading to their favorite birdfeeders. Cool.
Then there’s the cars-as-ballerinas effect. To understand this you need to understand that I don’t like cars. I think they are great tools, and I can appreciate (I suppose) a particularly well-designed automobile, but for the most part I hate them. They are dirty, noisy, and usually in my way. This is true whether I’m in a car or on foot, but as a pedestrian they are especially annoying because they are so much more dangerous and so much less respectful.
Winter helps with this on a number of levels. First of all, drivers are all freaked out. The roads are terrible. It’s tough getting out of your driveway, not to mention managing to stop at a light or start again afterwards. Everybody is sliding every which way and their confidence is shot. (Forgive me for getting a bit of amusement out of this.) Add to that the fact that the snow and my layers of scarves and hats also dampens sound. Put together the combination of slow driving, relative silence, lights reflecting off the snow, and the oddly graceful slip-sliding of tires and you have a transformation of the banal reality of winter traffic into an ethereal ballet. I kid you not: I have been stopped in my tracks by the silent beauty of oncoming headlights through the snow. (That is until I have to cross a street, when beautiful or not, they revert back into me-hunting demons.)
Finally, on some days it is just about sheer survival. On the very coldest mornings, when windchills have dropped into the negative 20s or worse, I’m not thinking about lightsabers or birds or ballet, I’m just focused on making sure my eyes don’t freeze shut and watching where I put my feet so I can get to school as quickly as possible. Arrival, under these circumstances, feels like a victory. And that’s not a bad way to start a school day.
Not quite a gamer yet…
Griffin loves going through the cabinet of board games in the basement. He dumps out the cards, plays with the dice, buzzes the buzzers, and wreaks havoc on the box corners. While he was doing this today, he started playing with a die from some game that had colors on each face. My gamer instincts kicked in and I thought, “We could actually PLAY a real game together… something with colors… he knows colors, and he kinda gets rolling the die.” So I came up with a few possibilities involving various collections of colored objects that matched the colors on the die. I wasn’t sure exactly what we would do, but something like “roll the die, then put the green thing into the box.” Not super sophisticated, but it would be a real game — with rolling dice. Yay! (Of course we already play lots of great games together — making faces, hide-and-seek, knocking towers of blocks down, etc. — but they are a different sort of game than the type with dice and moves.)
Griffin was thrilled that I was getting into it with him, but I think the logic of die-rolling or multiple steps of play still evades him. After a while, I could see the look on his face, “Daddy, why are you messing up my game???” So I let him get back to stomping on the boxes and folding up all the cranium cards. But soon, soon, he’ll be ready for the next step!