Tag Archives: Griffin

Summertime!

We’ve had a wet, cool spring here in Minnesota, so the arrival of summer has come like a flash! All of a sudden, the trees are full with foliage, gardens are exploding with all the colors of the rainbow, the sun is shining, and the outdoor festival season has begun. One of the things I really love about the Twin Cities is the Season of Celebration, otherwise known as summer. There is no shortage of celebrating the warmth and extended daylight with music, art, theater of all kinds, restaurants spilling out onto the sidewalks, and plenty of places to play, play, play.

Griffin and I enjoyed our first festival today, the Flint Hills International Children’s Festival in downtown St. Paul, and it really felt like a true kickoff to summer! We started our visit with a theater performance at the Ordway called Corbian the Dinosaur (check out the link! It’s really cool!) It was billed as a “glow in the dark adventure,” and it seemed right up his alley. This was Griffin’s first professional theater experience, though, so I wasn’t sure how long he’d last. But to start off, he was fascinated by the theater with its gold railings, velvety seats, and lights along the aisles! I chose seats close to an exit just in case we needed to make a quick escape, but as soon as the lights dimmed, he settled into my lap and watched. the. show. for. an. HOUR! I couldn’t believe it. He was entranced by the glowing figures, loved to clap with the audience, and yelled out, “ALL DONE!” whenever a scene would end (we’ll work on theater etiquette at some point!). A smashing success!

Next we headed out across the street to Rice Park where there were vendors, free art projects, and shady spots to watch people dancing on the side of a building. Seriously. These acrobatic building dancers called Project Bandaloop were AMAZING. Actually, I thought they were incredible and mesmerizing while Griffin was all into the bronze Peanuts sculpture of Lucy reading a book that we were sitting next to. Ah, to each his own.

The icing on the cake was nearly an hour spent in a public fountain seemingly made for water loving kids (and Griffin is most definitely a water loving kid who sometimes asks for a bath 3 or 4 times a day). Hamm Plaza was transformed into Discovery Garden (check out this time lapse video of it being made), which really should have been called Joyful Garden. I wish I had brought our good camera, but here are some shots from my phone of Griffin in the midst of pure summer bliss:

Griffin plunks himself down in the fountain!
Kids were lining up to stand in front of the little waterfall.
Beautiful art that begs to be played in is the best!

All in all, a fabulous start to summer. Bring on the adventure!

 

 

Visit with Grummy!

We were lucky enough to be on the last stop of the Grummy 2011 Grandchild Tour a few weeks ago, when Andrew’s mom, Sandy, stayed with us for a week! Between all the moving that’s been going on in our lives in the past year and settling into our new home, we hadn’t seen her since last spring, so a visit was long overdue. She wanted to see our new digs and spend some quality time with Griffin, so we got to host her here in Minnesota! Griffin was quite excited that Grummy, who normally appears on our computer screen, would be staying with us. He was quick to tell her all his new words, sit on her lap for some reading, and show her around the house. Every morning he excitedly woke up saying, “Grummy? Grummy?” and would rush down the stairs saying, “Hi, Grummy! Hi, Grummy!”

One of our destinations while she visited was the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. This is a favorite for us, as well as a great spot for taking photos. This time, once again, did not disappoint!

Spoon Bridge and Cherry & Springtime with Grummy
Spoon Bridge II
Hiding
Runnin'
So BIG.
Contemplative.
Griffin and Grummy deep in conversation.

We also took Grummy to the Children’s Museum, on a tour of Minneapolis lakes, to the Roseville Library, on a tour of Andrew’s school, and to the Mall of America! Overall, it was a great visit for everyone and we loved having a chance to hang out with Sandy. Griffin asked for Grummy in the morning for almost a week after she went home, and he’s still calling string cheese (which was a snack unique to Grummy in Griffin’s world) “Grummy cheese.”

All Aboard!

On a recent, chilly “spring” day, we headed to the Jackson Street Roundhouse with one of Griffin’s buddies from ECFE and his family. We knew there would be trains there, but holy cow! What a cool place! We got to explore real engines, old sleeper cars, and look at all kinds of train ephemera. A roundhouse, for those not in the know, is a circular or semi-circular structure built to service trains. This one used to service steam trains, but is no longer active and has been converted into a museum. Fortunately for us, they also give caboose rides on Saturdays, and this was probably the highlight of the trip for everyone. Having only seen “big choo-choo trains” from a distance, Griffin was in awe and had a blast.

 

Andrew and Griffin hang out the back of the caboose.
There goes the roundhouse!
A cold and rainy day, Griffin and Andrew decide to head inside.
What a cool ride!

Learning Tower

Historically, Griffin has been quite the helper in the kitchen. Well, maybe helper isn’t quite the right word; maker-of-messes-and-interested-in-doing-whatever-I’m-doing-in-the-kitchen…helper. He’s also a monkey and climbs on everything and anything, and while his sense of balance is really quite amazing, he’s had a few tumbles in the kitchen off of chairs and step stools that have made me think that this nifty invention called a Learning Tower is just what we need. Basically, it’s a sturdy platform with railings on all sides that enables Griffin to get to counter height to watch and help without me worrying, in addition to making sure he doesn’t touch the hot stove, sharp knives, glasses, coffee maker, toaster, etc., that he’ll fall off a wobbly step stool or chair. We have the room for one in our kitchen now and I’ve been coveting one ever since I found out that they exist. Only thing is, they cost over $200.

Enter Grandpa Jeff.

My dad’s a handy guy. I have lots of memories of making things with him, and while I wasn’t totally into the graph paper and Pythagorean theorem, I did enjoy making things and felt a lot of satisfaction out of the many projects we’ve done together. I mentioned the Learning Tower to him on a recent visit, and he thought he could tackle the project sometime this summer. A quick “DIY Learning Tower” Google search turned up a surprising number of plans, many of which seemed even better than the original. I was psyched to know we’d soon have one for Griffin to climb on!

Well, Grandpa Jeff came by our house today on his way Up North and had a surprise for us in the back of his car: a handmade learning tower! He said he just couldn’t wait until summer to make it and knew that Griffin would put it to good use immediately. Griffin knew exactly what to do with it and climbed up to do a little dance on the platform. We are both so excited to use it and I am grateful to have such a handy (and thoughtful) dad, Pythagorean theorem and all.

Griffin watches "Grm-pa" use the drill to attach the last of the legs.
A little snack for all the hard work.
"Yippie! I can reach the sink!"
Griffin dances on his new tower.

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!

Planes, Trains, and…Buses

Griffin has been taking much delight in all things that zoom lately. If there’s a plane in the sky, he’ll find it. If there’s a school bus coming down the road, you can bet he’ll point it out. I decided it was high time we took a day devoted to transportation.

Let me just begin by saying that I have so much respect for folks who, either by choice or not, get their little ones around using public transportation. A car affords a freedom that I’ve been taking for granted, especially in the winter, and I realized this morning as we were rushing to catch the 9:14 bus that life would be a lot more complicated if we didn’t have our own wheels. That being said, I also really enjoyed taking public transportation with Griffin today. I got to engage with him about what we were seeing out the window in a way that I simply can’t in the car, and more importantly, we got to look at each other and interact with other people, which just doesn’t happen in the insulation of our own car.

Anyway, we received two free Metro Transit passes when we moved to St. Paul (sign up for a land line and, in addition to getting lots of unwanted phone calls for people who used to have your number, you get all kinds of free things in the mail!), and with his sudden interest in zooming vehicles, it seemed like the perfect excuse for a field trip. Fortunately, we live just a block from major bus routes, so arranging to get to the airport was as easy as a web search and walking two blocks to the bus stop.

As the bus pulled up, Griffin waved and said, “Hi, Bus!” We got on and he was beaming with excitement. We rode through our neighborhood, down across the frozen Mississippi, and arrived at the Light Rail station. A small wait afforded us the opportunity to explore every nook and cranny of the station, and then the train pulled up! We got to ride through tunnels, past lots of different colored houses and stands of trees, and finally arrived at the airport, where we disembarked. It took a little creativity to find a place where we could watch the planes (post-9/11 has made it very difficult to find a place to watch, I found out), but a couple of trams and moving sidewalks lead us to the perfect place to have a snack and watch planes take off. It was perfect.

We had a great morning together (and it was free!). Griffin got to explore his new passion, and I realized that maybe we need to be taking the bus more often, not just because it’s better for the environment, but because it might just be better for me and Griffin, too.

Latest Words

Some of Griffin’s latest words (in no particular order)

Moon. Griffin LOVES the moon. He looks for it every time he goes outside, and he often finds it. He even found it trying to shine through the snowy sky last night as we were taking a walk, and the look on his face when I saw it, too, was priceless.

Tar. Actually “star.” We have a wooden star that we took out for the holidays that he loves seeing lit up, and now he’s pointing out stars at night, too.

Bay. Translated into “play.” As in, “Don’t be changing my diaper right now, it’s time to BAY!”

Reeeeee! READ! We do so very much reading. It’s one of Griffin’s favorite activities.

Bup-eee. Puppy. One of Griffin’s favorite stuffed animals right now is a giant one-eared yellow lab who used to be in my classroom. I brought the dog home to pillage him for stuffing sewing projects (cruel, I know), and Griffin found him and fell in love with him. So he’s a little skinny and has a missing ear, and that makes Griffin’s love for him all the more adorable. Lately, Puppy has wanted to wear a diaper (Griffin hands Puppy to me and signs ‘change diaper’) and go pee-pee on Griffin’s potty.  I’m hoping Puppy will teach Griffin to go pee-pee on the potty so I don’t have to.

Ball. Oh my goodness, Griffin can spot a ball from a mile away.

Ahh-wer. Water. Used to be ahh-wah, which sure did sound like ‘agua.’ Not sure where he’s picking up the Spanish, but I’ll take it.

Cookie. Of course, he had this one down after the first cookie he ever ate. Go figure.

Bye-bye!

Un-two-fee-four. Counting! He’s a genius! Nah, but it is cool that he’s getting the hang of it, and every once in a while he’ll have two things and he excitedly say, “Twoooooo!”

Eh-bow. Elbow. He likes pointing out body parts and elbow stuck for some reason.

Paare, Ap-pul, Nana. Pear, apple, banana, three of his favorite fruits.

Irk-le. Circle. To our surprise, he can identify a circle, square, oval, rectangle, star, crescent (moon), and triangle! It must be all of the reeeeeeeee-ing we do!

His language and communication is developing rapidly and it’s so cool to see the expression on his face when we acknowledge we understand what he’s saying. He’s also trying to use that communication to figure out the world. He likes to point out body parts and show that each of us has them. For example, he’ll point to his ears and then say “Mama” and point to my ears. The other day, we were taking a bath together and he pointed at my breast. I said, “Those are Mama’s breasts. They used to make milk for you when you were a baby. But the milk is all gone!” He seemed to think about it, signed ‘milk all gone.’ Later when we were downstairs in the kitchen, he pointed at my breast again (I was fully clothed this time, just to be clear) and said “Mama!” and signed ‘milk all gone.’ I said, “Yes! Mama’s milk is all gone!” Then he pointed at the refrigerator and signed ‘milk.’ I said, “Yes. There’s milk in the refrigerator.” Then he pointed to the refrigerator and signed ‘milk all gone’ with a questioning look on his face. And I said, “Nope! The milk in the refrigerator is still there!” At which point he looked rather relieved. Then just to be sure, he said, “Ba-ba bye-bye?” (we made him give up bottles cold turkey over a week ago), and I said, “Yes, ba-bas are bye-bye, but you can still have milk in a cup!” More relief.

This kiddo is getting more and more fun with each passing day!

Dressing Our Boy

Even before Griffin was born, I was disgusted with how horribly gendered all of the baby clothing out there is. Trucks for boys and butterflies for girls; blues, greens, and browns for boys, while girls have every color of the rainbow. I tried pretty hard to put him in gender neutral clothing from the beginning (which mainly consisted of stripes) but as he has gotten older, it’s getting harder to do. It seems like anything interesting looking (and not bloody expensive) is either made for boys or girls, not both.

It’s not that I don’t want Griffin to be a boy, whatever that means at this age. It’s just that I hate how important it is. He’s already going to be getting plenty of messages from others (and maybe subconsciously from Andrew and me) about what boys and girls are supposed to do and say. I want him to like what he likes for as long as possible before he’s aware of the “supposed to-s” and they inevitably influence his thoughts.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently because of four pairs of pants I bought for Griffin from the girls’ section. First off, since he’s a cloth diaper wearing kid, he needs at least a size up to fit his gianormous butt, and secondly, many boys’ pants are made of really stiff material (corduroy, jean, etc) which aren’t very generous with the diapers or freedom of movement. Many girls’ pants are made of stretchy cotton, which is perfect for his butt and doesn’t necessitate buying too-big pants, plus it accommodates his desire to run around as fast as possible. How perfect, right? Wrong. Girls’ pants are…well…girly. Actually, I would consider them way more FUN than boys’ pants, but if I were being honest, most people, including me, would look at them and think “girl.”

So living up to my standards for myself, I bought two pairs of rainbow striped pants, one green with multi-colored polka dots, and one brown with multicolored cutesy forest animals. They’re super fun and bright, and I think they’re great. They have been part of his rotation of pants for a while now, and I’ve been surprised how much of an indicator they are for gender. Most people refer to him as a girl when he wears them and then get embarrassed when I reply with the pronoun “he.” I try to make it clear that I don’t care if they think he’s a boy or girl, but one woman even went so far as to say, “Oh, of course he’s a boy! Now that I’m really looking, I can see that masculinity in his face!”

Most surprising has been the development of Griffin’s preferences as he solidly stands in toddlerhood. Andrew or I will dress him in some other pants, and if he catches sight of any of the four pants from the girls’ section, he gets incredibly excited and signs wildly to help put them on. He smiles big as we change him into his preferred pants and giddily prances around the house. I love to see him happy in his ability to choose and am delighted that he finds pleasure in such bright colors and patterns.

But this is a blog post because I feel like what I’m doing in buying girl pants for him is a statement. I suppose it might also be so if I put a girl in cargo pants and truck t-shirts, but somehow that doesn’t seem equivalent. I was actually prepared to have a girl to whom I would tell, “You can do anything, wear anything, be anything! You have the whole world at your feet! Pink or punk, whatever you want!”; give her a childhood much like my own where I was encouraged to build and fix things, play sports, cook, bake, and play with whatever interested me. While the pinks and princesses are certainly overwhelmingly popular with girl marketing, it seems more mainstream if a girl isn’t wearing pink or has trucks or prefers dinosaurs over dollies. I wasn’t ready for the fact that while I certainly would be supportive of my son wearing fairy wings in public, much of the people around me would not be.

As I read and hear about other parental struggles, I’m coming across many more parents distressed about their boys being teased and ridiculed about “girl” things than the other way around. It makes me wonder what is going on here: What is it exactly that people are afraid of? If I’m not concerned about my son wearing girl pants, why should you be? But here is where I get tripped up in my own thinking as I take it one step further: Would I put Griffin in a dress? Would I put clips in his hair? Would I buy a sparkly princess shirt for him?

The answer to all of these questions would be an emphatic YES if he wanted them (and frankly, it would be that way with a girl, too). But my intention is not to use my son as a way to make a statement; I just want him to be who he is. By giving him the choice to wear rainbow pants and play with magic wands, I feel like I’m saying, “You can do anything, wear anything, be anything! You have the whole world at your feet! Pink or punk, I love you for who you are.”

My happy kid in his happy pants.

Impromptu Project

Being the full-time parent of a toddler has its ups and downs. Lately, it’s been a battle of the wills for me and Griffin. I usually win, but my sense of humor flies out the window as a result (so is it really winning?). I’ve learned that patience is generally a prerequisite to maintaining my sense of humor, and the Battle of the Wills drains my fairly large supply of patience rapidly. Take, for instance, yesterday in the late afternoon: after a day filled with temper tantrums and plans gone slightly awry, I logically knew it was funny when Griffin pulled my pants down and gave me a raspberry on the butt while I was bending over to wipe up the juice he deliberately spilled on the floor. But in the moment, all I could think was “Andrew, please come home soon, or so help me, I am going to throw this kid through the window.”  Toddler parenting seems to be the ultimate test of whether you can go with the flow. I find my most successful days are ones where I’m not married to my ideas of what should or shouldn’t happen and I pay close attention to Griffin’s hunger, energy, and mood; my least successful are when I have a rigid agenda despite Griffin’s mood or think Griffin is going to love doing x. y, or z, but instead has absolutely no interest what-so-ever.

So this morning was a success as the stars aligned to allow for an impromptu project with my kiddo. After Andrew left for work, I noticed that the back door in our kitchen has a good one-to-two inch gap with the floor and is a huge heat-loss problem. I decided it was time to make a draft snake! I had several old sweaters just waiting for projects, as well as a buckwheat-filled bed pillow that proved to be not as comfortable as I was hoping, so I had the supplies. Griffin was fascinated watching the rotary cutter (from afar, of course), and under careful supervision, he actually really enjoyed sticking pins into the sweater material while I pinned the seams. He became my helper at the sewing machine, putting the pins back in the box as I pulled them out. The best part of the whole project was making him in charge of filling the snake with buckwheat hulls. I let go of any anxiety with making a mess (that’s what vacuum cleaners are for, right?), and just let him have fun. The end result was practical (no more leaky door!) and fun for both of us. And now every time he walks by the door, Griffin says, “sssssss!” and gives the snake a hug.

Project ground zero.

Buckwheat hulls are also good for playing with!

Griffin says, "sssssss!"

No more cold, leaky door!