On the way to the cabin, we stop at Mount Royal Market in Duluth. Sarah runs in to pick up a few jugs of water.
Maggie: “I don’t like it when Mama goes. I like it when Daddy goes.”
Griffin: “I think Maggie likes Mama better than she likes you, Daddy.”
Maggie: “Yeah!!!”
We had plans today to head downtown to see museums and monuments on the national mall, but it was a poor sleep night and a bunch of us were fighting colds, so we decided to stay closer to home. We walked down to Brookeway Drive, the street Dave and I lived on as kids in the ’70s. At the end of the cul-de-sac is a path up to the old railway tracks, now repaved as part of the Capital Crescent Trail. (I remember trains going by, and often put coins on the tracks for flattening.) The kids had a blast in and around the creek for a couple of hours, though I didn’t get the camera out for the epic meltdowns they had after one too many daring maneuvers led to cold, wet feet (and a butt, in Griffin’s case).
We spent Christmas in Bethesda with Grummy and Grandpa Stape, and all the Roy cousins. Fourteen people under one roof! Wonderful mayhem.
We didn’t let a little snow and frigid temperatures interfere with our Thanksgiving Bocce game. Grandpa Jeff got out the snow blower and made us a court. The teams:
We played to 11, and it was close to the very end. In the final round, 10-9, team 2 landed the clinching point. They simply had superior mastery of snow-braking techniques.
On the Roy side, the bocce tradition began at a rental house in Fort Bragg, California, on the Mendocino coast. We used to rent the place for Thanksgiving in the early 2000s, inviting friends and family for feast and fun. Here are two pictures from that era (with a slightly different climate!):
Griffin, at dinner last night:
“How do people actually get made?
Like how did the first people get made?”
This was not a question about reproduction—we’ve had a few conversations about that—but more of an ontological question about how humanity came into being in the first place.
Sarah gave a masterful overview of evolution and we looked at pictures on Wikipedia of various stages of human evolution. Before losing interest in the details, Griffin got far enough to state, “So, we’re related to fish.”
Sarah giving Griffin some cough syrup tonight:
“Come on honey. It’s not a fine scotch. Just drink it.”
Going on in our house right now:
<Maggie, pointing a stick-like object at Andrew>: “SHOOT YOU!!”
Me: “Honey, please don’t shoot your daddy.”
Griffin: “But Mom, she’s shooting love!”
Maggie: “No I’m not.”
Just told Griffin that friends are coming this weekend to play D&D and he got REALLY excited. Then he tried to “get” me as a goblin, so I cast a spell on him. Then he said, “well, I have 100 hit points and you have only 5, so I won.”
— Text message from Sarah this morningÂ
Everything below is in Griffin’s words. It’s a bit stream-of-consciousness, but we just asked him to talk about Kindergarten. Occasionally we prompted him to give further details. – Andrew & Sarah
I like the puzzle maps. They are maps but they are puzzles: Africa, United States, and the other one that kind of looks like Africa (“South America?” “Uh-huh!”).
The trinomial and binomial cubes are boxes with blocks inside them and you try to match the pattern on top of the box.
I like the reading corner because it has a chair and there are two reading corners, one in the back of the room and one in the front of the room. I like the the one that’s up high with the stairs to go up, in the front of the room. I like to read the garden books and I like the pretend books and I like sitting in the reading corner too. There is only one garden book; it’s like a pretend garden and it goes all over the roof and he goes through it. It has lots of white flowers and yellow ones too. The pretend books are not real so like they are real books but they are not real people and stuff.
I like the computers too in the multi-purpose room. We try to match words sometimes.
We eat with silverware and sometimes our fingers. We have lots of tables which we have to set up. We sing this song before we eat:
For the golden corn and the apples on the tree,
for the golden butter and the honey for our tea,
for fruits and nuts and berries that grow along the way,
for birds and bees and flowers, we give thanks every day.
We also have another song that we sing at the rug:
Choo choo choo choo,
Choo choo choo choo,
Going up the tracks,
Choo choo choo choo,
Choo choo choo choo,
Then we come right back.First we go to Malaya’s house,
Then we go to James’s house,
Then we go to Crosby’s house,
Then we go to Tegan’s house.Choo choo choo choo,
Choo choo choo choo,
Going up the tracks,
Choo choo choo choo,
Choo choo choo choo,
Then we come right back.First we go to Griffin’s house,
Then we go to Harrison’s house,
Then we go to Serenity’s house…
We keep singing like that until we go to everyone’s house.
The play structure! I love recess. Now we go on the play structure. The grass is medium new and medium not-new. The play structure is new; it was already built when I started school but the grass was new so we played out back instead of in the front. We like to play and tag and in the sand box. I like playing on the play structure too. We get to go outside every day, except when it is raining or super super cold.
I like my teacher Kristen and also Angela and Corinne, my side teachers. Angela passes out the food and she speaks Spanish.
I miss my sister when I go to school. It is a long day; I sometimes get tired.
When I get home, I like to snuggle with Maggie and also I say, “Hello Mommy and Daddy” if Daddy is home. I like to play with Maggie and when Mama and Daddy make dinner we like to play.
A week before heading up to the cabin, Griffin and I walked to our local comic shop to pick up a new graphic novel (he chose Journey to the Center of the Earth). While browsing, I noticed that the latest (fifth) edition of Dungeons and Dragons was out. I couldn’t resist picking up the Player’s Handbook and the introductory boxed set. I wanted to read over the new rules, and I rationalized that I’d use them when the D&D activity gets going again at my school this winter. (Also, the fourth edition was garbage, so I hoped the fifth would do better.) Of course I didn’t have time to read them during the week, so I tossed them into my reading bag for the cabin. It wasn’t until we got there that it occurred to me that Griffin might be old enough to get into it. Sarah was game, so after our hike on Saturday, I opened the boxed set and had them choose from the five pre-generated characters. For posterity, here’s the group for our first ever family D&D game:
A bunch of goblins, some wolves, and a bugbear later and everyone gained a level. Griffin’s first request when we got home was, “Can we play some more D&D today?” (The answer was no, but the request warmed my heart.)
It was neat seeing how Griffin’s five-year-old mind grappled with the complexities of the game. His favorite part was definitely rolling the dice: at one point the group rescued a kidnapped knight and he offered to tell the story of his capture; Griffin responded with, “Can I roll the 20-sided die?” But he definitely followed the story, and has a remarkable memory for detail. He instantly grasped some fairly complicated mechanics around how often he can cast his spells, and a week later he can explain the overall quest and the names of the characters and places in the story. (Including a number of details that I had forgotten!)
Maggie, naturally, had only a loose grasp of things, but also enjoyed rolling the dice and paging through the rulebooks to see the pictures.
With Sarah gone this weekend, we haven’t had a chance for a followup game, but this adds a great new activity to our family menu, especially when the snows blow in. (I always hear Ned Stark… “Winter is coming…”)
Oh, and in case any gamers stumble on this post, my first impression of 5th edition is overwhelmingly positive. The core rules are elegant with an emphasis on flexibility, role-playing, and imaginative fun. The writers captured the spirit of what made the original AD&D so compelling, while streamlining the rules and updating them for the current generation.
