Mr. Cellophane

Parenting is a mixed bag. And being a stay-at-home parent even more so.

One of the perks, at the moment anyway, is the morning routine. I get to sleep in, mainly because Sofi has grown up enough to take care of herself in the morning (she gets up to eat breakfast with Mom and then hangs out looking at books and playing with her Leap Pad until the rest of us get up) and also because Isaac likes to sleep in (he usually wakes up between seven and eight... for now, anyway). And, my gosh, if this isn't a HUGE perk! And then we often spend a good portion of our mornings (and maybe even some of the afternoon), in our pajamas, especially right now when the weather is so cold and there is no reason to go outside.

And I get the satisfaction of knowing that I'm witnessing my children grow, and can feel that I've helped guide that to the best of my ability.

These are definitely some of the nicer things about being a stay-at-home parent.

Then there is also the constant need for attention. The sibling rivalry and battles that are already starting (much earlier than I would have expected) and that need tending to. And kids are often under foot, leaning on you, pouncing on you, hanging from you and even strapped to you. Everything takes two to four times longer than it would if you just had some time to yourself. Which has become harder to get with two kids, since the naps rarely ever sync up, if they happen at all.

But this constant presence of kid energy and its constant need for attention isn't the only constant in this mixed bag.

It turns out I'm a constant as well. A little display of affection on Sofi's part (a very little display, may I add) has made this apparent.

I've often been suspicious that Sofi takes me for granted, and one reason is her art. Sofi is quite the artist, wanting to draw on the windows and paint with finger paints and water colors frequently. And like most children her age, she is quite prolific, able to produce many works in a short amount of time. And often after she is done creating her work she will announce who it is for. I can't recall a time when she has ever said one is for me. Instead they are always for someone else who isn't there, usually Mom or one of her grandparents. And to be sincere, this is incredibly sweet on her part, because it shows that she thinking of them, and wants to show that she misses them by giving them a gift of her artwork. In my regard, I am constantly there, and therefore I am never missed, and in turn I'm more reacted to rather than thought about and become overlooked in the mix of it all.

Well tonight we encouraged her, as she was getting ready for bed, to give her brother a good night kiss. So as I waited at Isaac's bedroom door, Sofi walked around the rocking chair that Mary and Isaac were in, leaned on her tip toes, cradled Isaac's head in her arms and announced how cuddly he was and how much she loves him, and kissed him on the top of his head. And then she looked over at Mary, and as if realizing she feels the same way toward her Mom, or at least not wanting her to feel left out, she embraced her mother the best she could on her tip toes, told her how cuddly she was, and how much she loves her, and gave her a kiss as well. Finished with her warm affections toward her brother and mother, she walked back around the rocking chair and out of Isaac's bedroom toward me. And as she walked by me... she blew me a kiss... without stopping... and without even turning her head! No words of affection, no embraces, and no kiss except for one flying through the air. It was as if she was thinking "Oh yeah! That guy! I suppose I better show him so affection quick too!"

Both Mary and I had to laugh, because the contrast in affection was just so stark!

Dear Sofi, please know this: if in the end the best I can get out of fatherhood is to know that I was your constant, there isn't anything more I would want. I'm certainly not the best at being a parent all of the time, but I will certainly do my best at being there for you as much as I can. Sincerely signed, your Dad.

White Dogs with Black Spots

Mary had wanted me [Diane] to document some of the conversations I have had with Sofia. Here is a recent one. am afraid there are many I am not remembering.

Papa and I arrived in La Crosse around 8:30 PM on a Friday evening. Sofi was still awake and ran out to greet us, requesting that I come and sleep in her room when I was ready to go to bed. I did that, attempting to bring Jake to sleep with me on the trundle. That did not go very well, as Jake was more interested in crawling underneath Sofi’s bed to find various toys hiding there. I could hear a lot of chewing going on so banned Jake to the living room to sleep with Papa for the rest of the night.

In the morning, while the trundle was still pulled out, I asked Sofi to help me retrieve the toys found under the bed. She was able to drag out stuffed toys, books, colors, and “little people” belonging to various toy sets or play houses. Then came a flat, oval piece of red plastic which neither of us could identify until another little people was found. This one, though, wasn’t intact. The hair was missing (now recognizable as a flat, oval piece of red plastic) and the spindle once holding the round head to the body was loose allowing the head and body to be pulled apart. The head was covered by teeth marks.

We both knew who the destroyer had been.

Sofi: “Jake is a bad dog. She ruins toys. You should take her back to her owner."

Gma: “I should? But I am Jake’s owner.”

Sofi: “She needs to go back. Those white dogs with the black spots are trouble. But you could get a black dog. They are good dogs. But those white dogs with the black spots aren’t good.”

Sofi's 4th Birthday

Sofi is now four, which she is very excited about, because she knows she gets to go to pre-school when she is four. She was disappointed to find out that the right to public education isn't immediately effective and that she has to wait until the fall.

She requested a surprise birthday party for her fourth year, and even though I'm not sure you can really request a surprise, we did decide to grant her wish. We ended up celebrating in the Twin Cities (we were up there to attend the ordination of one of Mary's friends) at Edinborough Park in Edina, a large indoor rec center, complete with a playground that has a huge tree to run around inside. Thankfully the Jacobson's were also attending the ordination, so along with family and other friends from the Cities Sofi also had friends from La Crosse at her party. She didn't seem to know what to think or do when she turned a corner in the park and found familiar faces there shouting "SURPRISE!" I almost got the impression that she wasn't all that excited. But she quickly warmed up and enjoyed playing in the playground with friends, and days later she was overheard pretending to be "in a forest" when she is startled by friends hiding there. So it clearly left an impression on her. (Even months later she will occasionally request a surprise party for her fifth birthday at the park "up where Michelle lives"). Below is a photo from the party, thanks to Vicki and Kelly who were there and actually thought to take pictures (thanks so much guys!). Click here if you'd like to see a few more.



Here are some reflections on this past year with Sofi:

Princesses become a HUGE deal this past year.

Likes watching movies and TV. Favorite shows are Clifford, Arthur, Sesame Street (notice a pattern?), and Dora and Diego. Also likes Disney princess movies and Barbie movies, but Dad has put the cabash on the latter.

Very interested in rhyming. Likes to make up words that rhyme and then declare "That rhymes!" Mary even heard her mumble "Stinky winky" in her sleep one night!

Likes dancing and has started taking dance class on Thursday nights through the local Park and Rec.

Likes listening to "my music" in the car (as opposed to listening to NPR or Dad's music), and she will sing along when she knows the words. Actually, if she doesn't know a song she will listen very closely, and since most songs repeat she can be heard singing along by the time the song is over.

Likes swimming.

She has become very helpful with the dishes, putting them away and is able to set the table. She even helps to a degree with folding the laundry, but not very well, because Dad likes to watch TV when he folds the laundry, and the TV gets too distracting for her.

She has learned how to whistle this past year, which blew us all away (I don't recall being able to figure that out until I was well into elementary school). She assume she learned from Grandma Ardelle, who whistles often to call her dog.

Likes puzzles and games.

Likes to change into different outfits several times a day. She usually doesn't wear anything that is appropriate for the weather. For example, most days during the winter she is wearing one princess costume or another, which don't cover her arms nor her legs. Occasionally she even sneaks on a swimsuit and just wear that around the house. She claims she isn't cold (though she is constantly making demands for hot chocolate and to start a fire in the fireplace), and I've given up trying to make her change into something warmer, though I do insist that she put on a sweater and tights before I start a fire or before she can have hot chocolate.

She's gotten over her bad habit of dumping her drawers all over the floor in search for one single thing within them. But she still has the bad habit of not putting her clothes away after she's done wearing them, and considering how often she changes in a day (she's been known to change her outfits four or more times in a day, and has been on her third outfit before Mary left for school one day) that by the end of the day her room usually looks like she emptied her drawers.

Another bad habit she began this past year is lying, which we are working on with her.

Another bad habit she broke herself of is biting her finger nails... she now has nice finger nails that she likes to have painted.

Doesn't nap much anymore. She does about once a week, the rest of the time she just hangs out in her room and plays until her nap time is up.

Likes to look at books.

She likes to draw people and faces, and has shown a big interest in writing, using lines of scribbles to represent words that she can recite back to you as a story.

Likes drinking hot chocolate, "with a smarshmellow in and a smarshmellow out".

Likes to eat mac & cheese, cottage cheese, grilled cheese and tomato soup. Actually, she's been requesting soup a lot. This is a winter thing, and I think she's doing it because she doesn't dress warm enough and in turn wants to eat warm food and drink warm drinks. Has also been requesting pancakes a lot lately. I asked her what she wanted me to make for lunch for her birthday. I thought for sure I was going to hear "Mac & Cheese!" Instead she replied "Chicken bone soup with black specks!" I was very surprised, but a week ago Mary made this chicken soup with wild rice (the black specks), and I served her some leftovers in a bowl for lunch, and she ended up having four helpings of that soup that day---she really loved it! More than mac and cheese it seems!

Likes going to Culver's (requests it when she thinks we are vulnerable)

She is still scared of monsters at bedtime.

Milestones

• Learned how to use the potty this past year and is now fully and completely potty trained. Can't remember the last time she wet her pants or even the bed. I think I can even recall one night when she actually got up to use the bathroom.

Too cute

Tonight Sofi was too cute not to publish a few glimpses of her. We have been wondering for a while why whenever her Dad gives her a kiss she immediately, absent mindedly, wipes it away. Tonight I asked her why she did that and her reply was "it's just so smoochy!"

And then we recently have been reading/singing a book she got for Christmas that illustrated the song "Skiddamerinki dinki dink" and she really enjoys it. Tonight I told her that there are actions and did them for her. She was very excited and wanted to sing it again so she could do the actions. The cutest thing was how much concentration it took for her to put her left hand on her right elbow while twirling the right hand and then to see her try and switch was quite entertaining.

She also got some footed fuzzy pajamas from Grandma D for Christmas but they were a little snug (lendthwise of course) so Grandma went back to the store to get the size bigger, size 5. Unfortunately they were all out of the pink ones with hearts (read "girly") that she originally had and so Grandma had to get the blue ones with helicopters (read "butch"). We thought she would be upset so we didn't say much about it and just put them in her drawer, Well she was quite excited when she found them there and has been wearing them every night. "The pajamas with the airplanes are my favorite" I heard her say the other night. Hooray! Perhaps she is not as girly as she seems!

It's not that Isaac isn't also blossoming in his cuteness. He has been choosing to walk noticeably more often these last couple of days and can now stand up from sitting in the middle of the floor and take off walking to something. We are officially beyond cruising. He is having a good time peeking around furniture for impromptu games of peekaboo and constanly playing with Mom's cooking toys.....er, utensils. And nothing escapes this kid. We have a beautiful new armoire for our TV, made by my cousin Arlan. We love being able to close the doors on the TV, and so does Isaac. So now he can play with the buttons AND close the door, all the while tormenting his sister by keeping her from her viewing pleasure....the fun never ends!

Downhill

We got just a touch of snow last night, but it was enough to put a layer on the drive way and it is cold enough that it isn't melting. So I bundled up the kids and headed outside to get it off the driveway before it became a layer of ice under another snow fall. While I shoveled Sofi got out her sled and went for rides down the small mounds of snow still left in the yard. After I was done we decided it would be more fun to take the sleds to the bigger hill down the street.

Sofi had lots of fun. She went down on her own several times, not her first time ever doing this, but a first for the size of hill that it was. She wiped out at the bottom of her first run, and it was fun for me to see a split-second look of panic quickly change to a look of smiles and bright eyes, which quickly turned into repeated attempts. We even talked about "baling" and she decided to try it, found it to be lots of fun, and decided to do it repeatedly even when she wasn't headed toward a tree (or barbed wire for that matter).

It was Isaac's first time sledding, and he wasn't sure what to make of it. He kept pretty quiet, and never really smiled... which is unusual for him.

Here's a short video of one run....

Isaac's 13th Month

One of the things Isaac loves to do, now that he is thirteen months old and is able to stand easily, is empty the utensil drawer several times a day.

Along with the standing, he is also walking more (as Mary mentioned), but still favors crawling, mainly because it is still faster, for the time being.

The following foods trump everything else on the dinner table:
citrus fruit, grapes, and cottage cheese. Also likes broccoli.

If you can think of anything else that Isaac has done/accomplished this past month feel free to add a comment below (for those of you who view this blog on the website)....

For more photos of Isaac, check out flicker.com

Sofi's New Year's Resolution

I actually did happen to talk with Sofi last night about her New Year's Resolution. About how this is a time of the year to reflect about the past year and think about what we'd like to improve about ourselves in the future.

It might seem like this topic is a bit above our almost-4-year-old but she was actually quite interested. (She is acting quite mature these days...well SOME days :-) When I asked her what she would like to get better at this coming year she paused and thought a bit and then said that she would like to not be so cold in her clothes. I agreed that clothing choices are important. So we talked about how the clothes she chooses do affect how comfortable she is and that one has to sort of figure out what is needed and then change if what was was chosen doesn't work.

I was quite impressed with this resolution because she does often get confused as to why she needs warm clothes on a cold day instead of cold clothes on a cold day. And she gets confused over which clothes are warm or cold. In fact this summer I tried to help her by attaching a little picture of a snowman on the drawer containing her warmer clothes and a little picture of a swimming pool on the drawer containing her cool clothes. But all that resulted in was her thinking she was going to go swimming whenever she picked clothes from the swimming pool drawer! Her choices are also heavily influenced by fashion whims rather than temperature needs of the day but I know we will continue to work on this. Heck! Most of my High School students are still working on this!!! I wonder how long it will take them to figure out that spaghetti straps and flip flops are NOT sexy in the middle of winter...

All in all I think her resolution is spot on. Especially since today was a very cold day (a high of 12 degrees F!). I was wearing wool pants and fleece around the house this evening and my daughter was dancing around buck naked before her bath, giggling. It made me cold just looking at her! And yes, I must be turning into my mother.

Happy 2008!

Happy New Year to everyone!

It is said that one should start off the new year in the manner that you want the year to be. If this is the case, our new year is looking good. Despite some sickness (Isaac still recovering from a bad cold that came with a bad cough, and myself coming down with a sore throat and the chills) we spent New Years Eve at a city-wide party for families. "I love that place!" was the Sofi quote as we left the party. It was at the nearby high school and the gym was filled with inflatable slides and inflatable bounce houses and many other fun, exciting, distracting, yes-I'll-gladly-wait-in-line-for-that activities.

And today we started our New Year with a party with friends, where we all got together for a big meal and then the kids went to the basement to play and the adults stayed upstairs for conversation and a chocolate taste test (for you email subscribers more info on the taste test should be included below, if not follow the link). It was all a very enjoyable way to start the year!

Reflecting back on the year, we've seen Isaac grow from a small babe not able to move around or feed himself, to the exact opposite, crawling all over and grabbing hold of many things to go in his mouth. Sofi has even more imagination, playing with princesses and acting out dramas, singing songs and dancing even more than last year. She continues to get better and better at swimming.

Back in early 2007 Mary survived a second semester filled with show choir invitationals, including one hosted at her high school, solo/ensemble competitions (again hosted at her high school) and a school field trip over spring break to California. Together the family survived a trip to Chicago so that I could go to a kite festival there... and our survival (or at least mom and dad's sanity) was in doubt on the way out, and after the first day there! Thankfully the following day and the trip home proved to be redeeming.

As for those requisite resolutions, I'll have yet to ask Sofi what hers are, but I wouldn't be surprised if they involved TV or hot chocolate. Mary is already talking about her garden, and has found a used copy of the Square Foot Gardener, and she is very excited. So I'm sure spending time in dirt is one of Mary's resolutions.

I never seem able to complete my resolutions. Last year I resolved to send out more greeting cards and thank you cards and I failed miserably at that. I really want to do this, so I really should resolve to try this again. And then there is my health... I really should exercise more. So that is (always) a good resolution.

But this year I'm going to resolve to do something else. This is something I haven't had as a resolution before, and one that I haven't told anyone yet, but perhaps getting it out there will force me to commit to it more. This year I resolve to make more art. I resolve to work on it two hours every night once the kids are in bed, on Monday, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. And my goal will be to create reflections on the Revised Common Lectionary.

Kind of an odd, specific resolution, I know. But with kids, the more specific I can be the more likely it will happen. This actually scratches a few itches:

• The desire to start building a portfolio
• Start experimenting with various media
• To use a blog to display work on a regular schedule (a practice in discipline)
• And a thought I've long had that "someday" I would like to create a series of art pieces based on the lectionary. In essence, to be a liturgical artist. (I probably need a special degree in this, but what the heck). And then I thought about it some more and I realized that the lectionary is a weekly thing, and that is just about the right amount of time I have for art right now. So why not just start it now?

So be it resolved. And since it is so amazingly easy to create a blog, be it resolved that all works of art created will be posted to the (brand spanking new) (un)Common Lectionary blog. If I actually follow through with my resolution, you should see something by the end of next week. But if historical evidence plays a factor in any of this, like my other resolutions this won't happen. But I don't usually make my resolutions known to anyone, so perhaps this factor alone will change things.

In closing I'd like to reflect on the news. Many newspapers and magazines like to post their top new stories of the year. I'd like to post mine. In my humble opinion, it is climate change. But this isn't because I happened to see An Inconvenient Truth this past year (though I do recommend that everyone see the movie and give it some thought). No, instead it is because of this:

• The President and the White House feel the evidence regarding climate change is not certain... a quote from whitehouse.gov, the White House's very own website: "The policy challenge is to act in a serious and sensible way, given the limits of our knowledge. While scientific uncertainties remain, we can begin now to address the factors that contribute to climate change."
• The White House has been accused by a committee of Congress of manipulating climate science, as expressed in a report which is the result of a 16-month probe by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
• The U.S. proposed to weaken the Global Climate Change Treaty in Bali by making it voluntary instead of legally binding, which leads Al Gore to accuse his own country of blocking the climate talks.
• all of this while Russia, Canada and the U.S. start legal wrangling over rights to the riches on the bottom of the Arctic sea bed... which are becoming increasingly easier to access.

Talk about trying bury your head in the sand and try to reap the benefits, or to use another cliche, have your cake and eat it too. Leave it to my government to fight legal battles over the riches on the bottom of the ocean as the polar ice cap begins to melt, in order to lay claim to more oil, which in turn will only contribute to the production of carbon dioxide, which in turn will continue the melt of the polar ice cap... all the while trying to suggest that we can't really prove that climate change is really occurring. According to a report by the BBC "The current rate of shrinkage they calculate [is] at 8% per decade; at this rate there may be no [polar] ice at all during the summer of 2060." That could be within my life time, definitely within Sofi's and Isaac's. And once the polar cap is gone, it isn't coming back in any time span that will interest the human species. Some may say that this climate change isn't because of human behavior, but there has never been a time with the ice caps have completely melted. When I consider all this, I really wonder what things will be like for my kids.

On that note, let me make note of a few things for them, in case they ever happen to look back on this blog, and wonder what things were like for us...

• Today a gallon of gas was $3.09 (wouldn't be nice if they had to imagine what it was like to pump a gallon of gas?)
• I paid $2.28 for a gallon of milk in '07
• Your dad works as a dishwasher and earns about $6.50 an hour (before taxes, which take away about 25-30% of that). The federal minimal wage required by law is $5.85 an hour. Actually dad's main job is to stay at home and take care of both of you, which is mainly thanks to your mother who works as a music teacher and earns a lot more than minimum wage.
• There was snow for Christmas this year (over a foot! The news channels said that we haven't seen this much snow at Christmas for about 20 years!)
• Coldest Temperature in WI in '07:
  -35 degrees at Gurney (Iron County) on February 6 & 7.
  
• Warmest Temperature in WI in '07:
  99 degrees at both Grantsburg (Burnett County) and Crivitz High Falls (Marinette County)
• The computer I'm typing this on has a 2.66 GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM, and a 120 GB hard drive. The first computer I ever owned (a gift from my parents as I went into teaching back in 1997) Sofi is now using for computer games. She plays a game with Winnie the Pooh, one with Micky Mouse and friends, and one with Barbie as Sleeping Beauty. That computer has (at best) a 233 MHz processor, 32 MB of RAM, and a 2 GB hard drive.
  

For the Love of Chocolate

Mary loves chocolate.

More to the point, she loves dark chocolate. So for Christmas I gave Mary something I knew she'd love---a dark chocolate taste test. Seventeen different bars of dark chocolate of various brands.

The idea came from an article I'd read in Consumer Reports this past year. They'd done a taste test of their own on fourteen different kinds of dark chocolate, from the fancy organic kinds to the more consumer-based Hershey versions (not the well known Hershey bar, mind you, but their fancier dark chocolate versions). As I liked to think of it, it was a battle of local coop chocolate vs. nationwide drugstore chocolate (and that is where I got the various seventeen bars---throughout the year I bought any and all dark chocolates that I could find at the People's Food Coop and at Walgreen's).

Without giving the article away (because if you follow the Consumer Reports link above you'll only get the outline of the test, not the ratings---the results are for CR members only), what surprised me, and what Mary could not believe, is that Hershey's comes out on top. On the bottom was Newman's Own Organics.

Hence the idea for the taste test. It was more for me really---I just had to know, given no knowledge of the chocolate's origin, what Mary would really prefer.

So that is how we broke in the New Year. With four other family friends, who helped us break them into taste testing sized bits and label and number them to hide their identities. We decided beforehand though that seventeen was a bit to much to take at once, even in test tasting sized bits, so we just kept the sample size to a random six.

The results of the our sample of six? The top three (in no particular order, because everyone had their own personal top, but pretty much everyone agreed these were the top three) were...

• Equal Exchange Organic Very Dark Chocolate, 71% cocoa
  
• Hershey's Extra Dark, 60% cocoa (or as the label reads: "cacao")
  
• Endangered Species Intense Dark Chocolate with Cocoa Nibs, 75% cocoa
  

The least favorite?

• Dagoba Organic Extra Dark Chocolate, 87% cocoa
  (to be fair to this brand, this was one of Mary's top three, as she put it "It's the kind of bar was I can just have one square and feel satisfied", but was far too bitter for the rest of us)
  
• Lindt Extra Dark, 85% cocoa
  (tasted "waxy" compared to the others, and surprising because this was near the top in Consumer Reports)
• Cadbury Royal Dark
  (tasted "cheap" compared to the others... interesting, because it is made by Hershey's whose other bar rated top in both our taste test and in CR's)

We all agreed that after testing the six that we did, that it was just the right amount of dark chocolate, and that we'd be pushing it to test more. I guess no matter how much one claims to love chocolate, there is only so much one can ingest in one sitting. At least at our age any way.

I'll keep you posted as we get around to reviewing the other eleven bars....