In Griffin’s classroom, crazy hair day coincided with their celebration of the Indian festival of Holi, “The Festival of Colors,” which involved running through clouds of colored powders. The last picture, above, shows Griffin after the festival.
During dinner last night, we were discussing how messy babies are when they eat. In my customarily ridiculous fashion, I proposed that high chairs should be built inside large tubs. All the food detritus would fall into the tub. Then at the end of the meal, you pull a lever and a huge bucket of water dumps on baby, high chair, and tub, washing all the sticky, gooey, crumblies away. We laughed about this, agreeing that one of many problems with my proposal, was that the sudden deluge would be scary for the hapless filth monger in the midst of it.
I tried proposing heated dryers, but Griffin didn’t think that this would be enough. He suggested putting an umbrella over the baby. But this, I countered, would only clean the area around the high chair, without cleaning the baby himself (we were imagining Oliver as our first beneficiary). Griffin considered this, and responded, “What if we put some sort of water resistor over him?” I shook my head, misunderstanding, and pointed out that we need the baby to get wet. Griffin, in turn, shook his head, saying, “No, a water resistor.” I still didn’t get it, thinking he meant some sort of anti-water-force-field. He elaborated, “You know — an electrical resister doesn’t stop the electricity, it just kind of slows it down. So a water resistor would be like that, making it less strong.”
My jaw dropped. My nine-year-old just schooled me on electrical engineering, using the idea of a electrical resistance as a metaphor.
Patent pending.
Griffin and Maggie fondly recalled their joint birthday party in 2016 and decided to merge their parties again this year. Because we all love having parties outside, the endless winter of 2018 stymied our attempts to schedule it between their birthdays. We settled on the final weekend of the month, but even then our first two choices of parks weren’t open yet. We eventually settled on the Como playground near the Como Town mini-amusement park.
After all the weather hassles, the day was gorgeous. Breezy and warm in the sun and cool in the shade—perfect weather for a few hours rampaging around a playground. Sarah made two batches of cupcakes: Griffin had red velvet with cream cheese frosting; Maggie had vanilla with blue frosting. Griffin and Maggie (and Oliver, too) were exhausted and happy at the end of the festivities.
We weren’t trying to photograph the event, but I captured a few shots on my phone:
And two short videos of the celebratory songs:
Tonight I asked Griffin if he’s been keeping track of his screen-time minutes (a thing we do).
He replied, “I thought you said that we’d do it by sound.”
“By … sound?”
“Yes, last night you said that we would do it by sound,” he repeated, looking entirely earnest.
<Puzzled thought.> “Ohhhh… I said we would play it by ear!”
Love the way brains grapple with new idioms.
Ever since building our modest Ice Castle four years ago, we’ve wanted to build a more proper ice-brick igloo. We’ve steadily filled the garage with half-gallon and quart cartons in the intervening years. This winter, with plenty of arctic chill, seemed like the perfect time to tackle the project. Despite some pictures of me working on the project, this was spearheaded by Sarah, who did the lion’s share of the work with some help from Griffin and Maggie. (Oliver was an active observer.) The color in the blocks comes from some drops of food coloring added while we poured the water into the molds.
In the evenings at our house, in those interminable minutes while we try to finish preparing dinner, the two older kids are often “bored” and don’t know what to do with themselves. Recently, Griffin shuffled into the kitchen and asked me forlornly, “Daddy, what can I do right now?” He wasn’t asking, “How can I help?” No, this was a bitter expression of hopelessness in the face of far too few minutes of screen time.
I usually reply with something snarky like, “Go stare at a wall!” (Never very effective, but surprisingly satisfying.) Last week, however, I came up with something new. Perhaps a parenting lesson from ECFE finally sank in. Or maybe it arose from the fact that I was facilitating an immersive “design thinking” week at school. Instead of snark or exasperation, I said, “YES! Quick, get a piece of paper and a pen. Draw a shape that represents you in a color that represents your mood!” (I was riffing off of an icebreaker from a recent workshop.) Startled by my specificity, Griffin immediately went to his desk and did it, coming back with a multicolored blob that included a variety of emotions (including “hungry” and “bored,” but also some positive ones). Then he asked for another “art challenge.” And I heard the distant sound of angels singing.
Art challenges have become a fun new activity to keep the gremlins of our witching hour at bay. Maggie, of course, joined in too. Below are a couple of examples of their responses to my challenges from the last few days.
I’m not deluded enough to imagine that this will work forever, but I’m enjoying it while it lasts. And I do love watching their artwork evolve.
While working on a project yesterday, Sarah became justifiably frustrated that the kids were goofing off and not following directions. At some point, she blurted out, “You’re being so inefficient!”
Griffin replied, “We’re kids. We’re not supposed to be efficient.”
Zing!
Let it be known that January 17, 2018, was the day that Griffin discovered his true canvas:
Travel with three is definitely harder with three than with two. Even though Griffin and Maggie are great travelers at this point, they still need a fair amount of guidance and support, especially around luggage handling: “Don’t run over that lady’s toes!” “Your bag is tipping over!” “Your coat is dragging on the floor.” And then, of course, they simply don’t have the muscle power yet to get bags onto shuttles or sometimes even escalators. Add Oliver to the mix and at least one parent is relatively hamstrung. He comes with additional supplies too. We ended up traveling “light” with merely five suitcases, five backpacks and diaper bags, two booster seats, one full car seat, and the seemingly infinite writhing tentacles of our winter coats. There were a few moments when we were entirely beholden to the kindness of strangers.
But we made it, unscathed, and the flight itself was largely peaceful. Let the mayhem of a seven cousin holiday begin!
I love the little tidbits that the kids come up with as they engage more with the world. At a recent meal, Griffin noted that the word because is spelled one way, but is often spoken a different way: ’cause. He knew that he should spell out the full word in writing, but he wondered what he should do if he were writing the words that someone else said (i.e., quoted dialogue). This led to a great conversation about written dialogue and how the conventions of writing don’t always match the conventions of speech.
This would have been a great discussion topic in English workshop with 8th graders, so it was a real treat to have it spontaneously emerge from our 3rd grader’s ever-curious mind.
