We didn’t take many pictures on this, our first summer trip to the cabin, but we had a great time. Jess, Kevin, Murray, and Olive joined us. Despite some rain and bugs, the kids spent most of their time outside, exploring the woods and shoreline.
Most exciting natural discovery: the loon nest!
Sarah was out of town for a wedding. The kids had been asking for another D&D game. We hadn’t played in ages, not since last summer. So, yes, totally, let’s play D&D! But let’s do it properly. We needed more players. I invited over some friends of theirs so that we could potentially have five players, but if the youngest two—Maggie and her friend, Olive—lost interest, they could entertain each other. Five kids while solo parenting… I was asking for it.
We had a great time. Maggie and Olive only played for a bit, but Griffin, Murray, and Miles invested a couple of hours into it. In the year and a half since our first game, the kids have developed quite a bit. Some observations and highlights:
WARNING!
Plant monsters and zombies
KEEP OUT!
Griffin and Maggie, turning seven and four respectively, agreed to have a joint birthday party this year. Each of them invited seven friends, and we all gathered at a local park for cupcakes and fun. It was a gorgeous day, and the whole event felt unusually relaxed. The kids rampaged around while the adults chatted, kept nominal watch, and guarded the cupcakes (my strategy: eat them).
For years we have despaired that our children would grow up to be shiftless, unmotivated drones. Fortunately, for at least the past six months, they have settled onto a pair of robust dreams for the future. Maggie will be an astronaut. Griffin, who is less excited about the discomforts of space travel, will be a space scientist, staying on the ground but helping Maggie with her experiments.
Griffin got me with two April Fool’s Day jokes already this morning: he told me he made me some brownies for a treat (which turned out to be brown E’s) and he handed me a shoe box and said he got me a new pair (which turned out to be a pear)! He was so delighted with himself, and so was I!
We recently came across these interview questions on Facebook. Seemed like a fun thing to do. We first three interviews in January, but Maggie wasn’t interested in answering the daddy questions back then. She grudgingly agreed to give it a go during spring break, on March 23.
| Mama |
Daddy | |||
| Griffin | Maggie | Griffin | Maggie | |
| What is something I always say to you? | Stop. | Clean up. | When I say, “Do you want to play a game,” you say, “Yeah, sure.” | I don’t know. |
| What makes me happy? |
When I do stuff for you. | Clean up. | When I play with you. | Saying, “Please can you play with me?” |
| What makes me sad? | When I mess up the house. | When I accidentally break something. | When I mess up the house. | When me and Griffin do bad things. Like break glass. |
| How do I make you laugh? | By tickling me! | We sing silly things! | By tickling me! | By saying funny things. |
| What was I like as a child? | Mischief! | I don’t know! | You didn’t have a CD player. | Shrug. |
| How old am I? | 39 | I don’t know. | 44 | I forgot. Twenty? No. Not twenty. Twenty-four? No. Are you twenty-four? |
| How tall am I? | I don’t know! | REALLY tall! | I didn’t measure you. I’m guessing it might be like four feet, maybe, no… five feet. | Super tall! |
| What is my favorite thing to do? | Play with me! | Watch TV! | Play with me. | Play! |
| What do I do when you’re not around? |
Go to the store. |
Work. |
Go to school. |
Do computer work. |
| What am I really good at? | Typing on the computer. | Clean up with me. |
Making pannakukken. |
Shrug. |
| What is something I’m not good at? | Going under your bed. |
Not cleaning up. |
Reading Chinese. |
I don’t know. |
| What do I do for a job? | Take care of Maggie. | Something. | Go to work. |
To clean up dinner. To clean up the dishes. |
| What is my favorite food? |
Cheese kabook… what is that thing? You know that thing that Grandma and Grandpa make with cheese or apples? [Strudel] | I don’t know! | Pannakukken. | Sausage! Or raspberries. |
| What do you enjoy doing with me? | Playing Mille Bornes! | Playing! | Playing Rat-A-Tat-Cat. | Play! Frozen spot-it. |
We have an old twin-sized futon—the ultra-basic variety with the unfinished pine base that folds, awkwardly, into a chair. Though it has been useful over the years, it doesn’t get a lot of love. In return, it has become increasingly lumpy and shabby looking. Sarah and I generally ignore it, keeping it around for rare times when we are brimming with house guests. The kids, however, see it as a multi-purpose device: trampoline, hurdle, and the floor, wall, or roof for their many ephemeral fort designs.
Said futon recently sprung a leak, spewing forth tiny bits of foam (the foam core is surrounded by a nimbus of smaller chunks, ergo the lumpiness). Sarah applied a duct tape bandage, but the kids regularly defeat this measure with a single good leap.
This morning, Sarah and I found the futon blocking the basement hallway with a spray of foam guts on the carpet. We asked the kids to clean up the mess, and reminded them that the poor futon is off limits until we come up with a hardier solution. Some time later, I returned to the basement and found that Griffin had filled an entire trash can with foam bits, vastly more than what we had seen on the carpet before. With sinking heart, I inquired as to what was going on. Griffin proudly said that he was making sure that no more would leak out again, at which point he reached into the growing wound and extracted another armload of foam.
As I groaned at the plight of the poor, eviscerated futon, Maggie squealed, “More, Griffin, MORE!”
This morning, per her Wednesday custom, Sarah went to an outdoor workout in the pre-sunrise Minnesota air. (Blizzard last night? Pshaw.) But this post isn’t about Sarah’s well-known bad-assery. Just setting the scene: I’m solo dad.
So at 6:30, I’m down in the kitchen, making my breakfast, steeling myself to shovel the walk and trudge through the very deep snow to school. Griffin comes down earlier than usual — fully dressed — excited for a snow day. (His school was cancelled. Mine was not.) He settles down at the art table to paint some volcanoes. Maggie comes padding into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, and croaks, “Where’s Mama?”
I remind her that Mama vanishes on Wednesday morning. She looks sad and cold, and may burst out crying at any moment. Griffin sees this and says, “Maggie, would you like to paint with me at the art table?” Maggie looks up, but shakes her head… not interested. Griffin’s shoulder’s slump, but then he takes a deep breath, and says, “Ok. Would you like me to read a book to you on the couch?” Maggie considers this for a moment, and slowly nods her head. Moments later, they are snuggled up on the couch reading a book together. And my heart is bursting.
During a conversation at dinner tonight, when Sarah determined that Sana’a was the capital of Yemen, Griffin asked,
“Did you think of that, or did your phone think of it?”
(It was the phone.)
Recently, I walked with the kids to some of our neighborhood Little Free Libraries. While walking, we started talking about whether we would someday put one in front of our house, even though there is one directly across the street from us.
I suggested that I might make one that was all for science fiction stories, and I would decorate it with space ships and alien planets. Griffin and Maggie loved this idea, and quickly came up with their own versions.
Griffin’s would be all about science and would have pictures of microscopes and tiny (microscopic?) creatures on it. He asked a few questions about the difference between science and science fiction, but once he understood the distinction, he was firmly committed to real science.
Maggie, of course, shouted, “FROZEN!” When I asked her how it should be decorated, she looked at me like I was hopelessly ignorant, and said, “ELSA!” followed by a whooshing sound which I took to be the sound of Elsa’s ice magic.
