The First Five Years

And now you are five, Milo and Nora. The rest of the adventure is a new chapter.

Tomorrow's Birthday Class Snack

I'm so proud of myself.

Aches & Pains

You know those nights when you have a fever and you're freezing all night long, but simultaneously sweating, and your head is killing you, and you feel sick to your stomach, and you toss and turn in a restless half-sleep, and wake feeling like you can't stand to move? Those definitely-call-in-sick kind of days? Last night was like that, except then I had to get up, make breakfast, make the kids' lunches, get everybody fed and dressed and then put on boots and coats and hats and mittens and get them buckled into the car and then drive the car to school and then get off the boots and coats and hats and mittens and get the kids checked in and then drive home.

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For the first two years of preschool, Milo and Nora had the best teachers ever. They were so empathetic and loving, and what really comforted me is that I could tell they both just genuinely liked the kids so much. One time I brought them into the classroom and Milo was telling them about his ear doctor's appointment, and Nora, not wanting to miss out, piped up, "AND I'M CONSTIPATED!" And both of their teachers just cracked up laughing, and one of them said, "Oh Nora, I love you!" I felt comfortable leaving them with their teachers, even though they were young enough that sometimes they would cry when I left, because their teachers were so awesome.

This year their teachers are more like the traditional teachers. There is nothing wrong with them, but they're not like the old teachers. One of them in particular is really quite strict. Every time she comes over to talk to me, I feel a little nervous because I know that she's going to tell me something not so great about Milo. (It's always Milo. This bothers me too.) For instance, this morning she came to talk to me because yesterday Milo had struggled when it came time to put on his snowsuit.

Milo is having a phase now where everything bothers him if it's not just right. He gets upset very quickly if his socks or shoes don't feel right, or if his pants are too loose, or if his coat feels too big or too small. Every little thing has to be just so or he's liable to freak out. This is kind of new. He wasn't like that as a baby, the way Nora was. I think Milo is in a stage of disequilibrium these days, and he's just kind of off in general. Anyway, yesterday they put on their snowsuits to go outside and Milo got really upset because his pants were bunched up inside his snowsuit and it didn't feel right. According to his teacher he totally lost it and he was sobbing, and she had to help him make it right. (This she didn't like, I got the impression, because they are supposed to do it all themselves.)

I mean...yeah. Milo is doing that these days, and I understand it's inconvenient and frustrating. But I don't think he can help it. She wants me to try to desensitize him a little bit so that these things don't bother him so much, but I'm not sure how to do that. My guess is that it's a phase and he'll get better over time or develop coping mechanisms. I feel kind of sorry for him. I also empathize, as I'm a little like that too. I hate to get my hands wet, I hate it when my sleeves are bunched up or my socks fall down, etc. The thing to work on is probably helping him deal with his frustration without totally losing it - but you'd think his teacher would know how to tackle that angle herself.

Fortunately, the kids see to like their teachers just fine, so that what's most important, I imagine. I'm pretty determined not to go down the road of thinking my kids are oh-so-special snowflakes who must be treated a certain way by everybody in their lives.

******

This morning in the car on the way to school, Nora said, "Mom, all of the other girls in our class like things like pink and purple and other pretty things. And I don't really like that stuff." I said, "It's okay if you don't like that stuff. You don't have to like it." She said, "But the girls want me to like it, they want me to play those things with them." Awwww. This matches with what I have seen, which is that the other kids are nice to Nora and they do want to play with her and they include her. But she isn't quite sure how to fit in because she has interests that are a little different from most of the girls.

The girls in the kids' class are extra frilly this year, for whatever reason, so it might not be the best fit in the world for Nora, but I'm hopeful that she'll find her own way as a kid and find her own group of kids who she feels comfortable playing with. Nora certainly likes playing with her neighborhood friends and other friends outside of school.

Trees, Wagons, and Dinosaurs

 It has been such a festive weekend. Saturday morning we headed to the Christmas tree farm to cut a tree before the weather turned. It was still dry on Saturday, and not too cold either. There is a family farm nearby that cultivates Christmas trees and pumpkins and apples; they do a brisk business during the fall and winter season. This family farm business isn't something we had when I grew up on the west coast, but here, every family and school group goes out to the farm to pick apples or pumpkins at least once a year.

This year we decided to cut down a balsam fir, which was at the far end of the fields so we hopped on the hay wagon to make our way there. The kids had a blast. While Jake and I picked out a tree, the kids just ran up and down through the rows of trees, over the hill and back again. Like dogs happy to be free they just ran and ran and ran. Once we returned with our tree, Nora and Milo played in the hay tunnels and drank complimentary hot apple cider while Jake strapped the tree to the car. Definitely the best Christmas tree cutting experience ever. No snow, no frozen fingers, no tears, no lost gloves, no colds, no bronchitis. I feel like this is symbolic of how life is getting back to normal as the kids leave the toddler/preschool years and enter the classic childhood years.

On Saturday afternoon I made chili and we trimmed the tree, the kids putting 18 ornaments on the same low branch, which the cat then proceeded to attack over and over again. It was so fun this year because Milo and Nora are at the age where they're super excited about all of this stuff. They love the Christmas lights, and were really eager to get the tree, and they couldn't wait to decorate it. Now right before bed they both creep back downstairs for one last look at the tree, walking all around it admiring the different ornaments.

On Saturday evening we went to a party and once again I was reminded of how great the childhood years can be, as the kids spent the whole time playing with another little girl off on their own. This might be the first party we've attended as a family that felt like an actual party to both me and Jake; neither of us had to spend the whole time following kids around.

Today was the kids' birthday party, which they shared with two other kids from their class. I was happy to do a 4-in-1 party and kill a bunch of birds with one stone. It was at the Children's museum and the kids dressed up as dinosaurs, erupted a volcano, and had cake but definitely the best part was just playing in the museum after those formal activities ended.

The only sad part of the day was seeing Milo's tears start to emerge because he couldn't blow out his trick candle for good. Trick candles are maybe not the best for almost 5-year olds who don't quite get the concept.

Rather than doing traditional birthday gifts we had an exchange, where each kid brought a present and took one home. So the kids had a reasonable 1 present each instead of an unreasonable 20 presents each. Both presents were games, which we played tonight while my potato and leek soup bubbled on the stove.

I had to laugh when we were driving home in the car, the kids excited to open their presents when we got home. They also had a couple of cards, so I said, "You can open your cards too." Nora said, "No we can't, we're opening our presents." I replied, "You can open your present and your cards." And then I heard the future teenager talk back to me, as Nora said, "Mom, I don't have one hundred hands!" Like, sheesh, are you really that dense mother?

It has been kind of a rough week for me. I feel like I'm on the edge of having a giant preschool-level tantrum myself these days, as I deal with a mathematician at work who has begun harassing me again. I try to leave that behind when I come home as best I can, but it's hard to think about everything I need to do for birthdays and parties and school snacks and Christmas and the end of the semester and meetings and deadlines.

But the kids don't know about that stuff, and they're almost 5, and I'm already looking forward to next Saturday, dreaming about cookie baking and Charlie Brown Christmas watching and present wrapping.

You Can Never Go Back

I lived in the bay area for 5 years in the 90s. I lived in a 500 square foot apartment on the Stanford campus and worked as a teacher, and eventually also got a master's degree part time on evenings and weekends. I enjoyed living there and made some wonderful friends, who I still cherish today.

So going back to the bay area is incredibly nostalgic. It is just so beautiful there. I'm more apt to feel this way in the deepest winter months, when it's frozen and snowy in my hometown. In California it's never frozen and snowy. Even though it was rainy during my brief visit, it was warm and green and I got to see the ocean and the trees and feel the breeze on my skin.

One of the things I did when I was in California was spend a night in Palo Alto, close to where I used to live. At one point I met a dear friend for coffee on the downtown strip, and marveled at how much everything has changed. Later we wandered through the Stanford shopping center, and everything has changed there too.

I think the big thing that changed was the dot com boom. Downtown Palo Alto was never shabby, but it wasn't particularly fancy either. Now it is ridiculously fancy. Like, I walked into a clothing store and saw jackets for $1500 and sweaters for $800. I went to the shopping center and saw a different place from what I knew from my time there. It is a place that caters to the ultra wealthy.

We've been priced out of the bay area permanently. A professor could never make the necessary salary to buy even a condo to house a 4-person family, never mind a house. This is probably just as well, because I've spent enough time in a smaller town now that I've lost my tolerance for extreme amounts of traffic, crowds, high prices, status cars and clothes, and no parking spots at the grocery store.

I met my father and stepmother for lunch while there. My dad was unable to make it through an hour's lunch without making denigrating remarks about academics (like me), government employees (like me), and making sneering, incorrect claims about teachers who make 150K while working "seasonal, part-time" jobs. (I looked it up. The average teacher's salary in the district he referenced is actually 57K. Meanwhile, the median home sales price is 1.6 million.)

Every single time I agree to see my dad, I end up regretting it. I really, really need to stop. I am 41 years old, and it's pathetic that I still allow such casual, cutting remarks to hurt me so deeply after so many years. But for whatever reason, they do.

The bay area, with its ostentatious displays of wealth and status, is a good place for people with values like my father's, but it wouldn't be a good place for me. I feel more at home in my hometown, a place where folks actually respect hard working people like teachers. When I lived in California, I didn't take full advantage of everything the bay area had to offer, probably because I spent so much of my twenties working until all hours of the night, grading, prepping lessons, making tests and quizzes, and developing new classroom activities. (You can't do that stuff during the work day, because during the day you're actually teaching.) Like everybody I knew, I worked summers to supplement my low income (which never even made it to 30K). You know what? I wish teachers made 150K. Sometimes I can forget how cushy my life is now, and how easy my job is compared to my time spent teaching. The fact that I actually get to sit for most of the day, the fact that I get to go to the bathroom whenever I please, the fact that I do not have to control the behavior of 30 teenagers at a time, some who would (and did) happily tell me to fuck off on a daily basis...my god, the ease of my job now compared to that degree of stress and physical exhaustion is ridiculous.

You know what I like about where I live now? People write op-eds in the paper thanking their children's teachers for the work they do. The winters suck, but the values of my community align a little better to my own.

Maybe I Should Get a Lock

There must be something about me taking a shower that sends off a little alarm in the kids' heads that beeps and goes, "GO INTO THE BATHROOM NOW AND BOTHER MOM FOR 20 SECONDS AND THEN RUN IN AND OUT OF THE ROOM ABOUT 12 TIMES OVER THE NEXT 10 MINUTES LEAVING THE DOOR OPEN SO THAT THE ROOM STAYS REALLY COLD."

Milo's Day

This morning Milo fell at school and bumped his mouth against the table. They called us to see if maybe we wanted to take him to the doctor or the dentist. So I had to come in during the middle of the morning to see how he was doing. Milo seemed okay but had some blood on his gums and didn't want to bite down on anything.

If this had happened at home, that would have been the end of it. But you can't be that asshole parent at school who says, "Yeah, I actually don't think it's necessary to call the dentist over this, I'm sure he'll be fine." So I had to take him to the dentist, who looked at his mouth for about 30 seconds and declared him fine. So long, aspirations of getting work done.

By then it was the afternoon so we went ahead and picked up Nora, too, and then I took them to the store to get presents for the present exchange for the party we're having this weekend. We're having a joint birthday party for 4 kids with close birthdays. Instead of making everybody bring presents for four kids, we're having everybody bring just one gift and then we'll do an exchange. While we were at the store, I also got soup (Milo doesn't want to chew hard things after bumping his mouth). So it was a nice evening meal of chicken noodle soup for the kids.

Later Jake asked Milo, "What do you think you want to get Mom for Christmas?" Milo said, "I don't know...maybe a new bottle opener." Gee, and I thought my drinking was under control!

Later Milo sought me out and asked me what he should get for Dad. I said, maybe Dad would like a tie, and Milo was happy about that idea. But then he told Jake about it, and Jake said, "Now you can't get me a tie since it wouldn't be a surprise." Jake was joking, but Milo took it to heart and became very worried about how he had ruined the tie idea and what would he do instead? Poor kid. Perhaps tomorrow afternoon the kids and I will spend some time doing something for Jake's Christmas present.

It sort of reminds me of this sweet tear-jerker of a commercial:

Parenting Strengthens Radical Constructivist Epistemology

Here's one of the "books" Nora wrote tonight. She wrote:

"My June is good. My June is happy. My Decembr was good." (She wrote the right page about June first, and the left page about December second.)

Nora wrote another book, but I made her stop in the middle when it was bedtime. She wrote:

"We pland to mak applsoc and somun..." (We planned to make applesauce and someone...) Someone what? We will have to wait for tomorrow for the next installment to find out what someone did. Nora took her books to bed with her and when I turned out the light and closed the door she proceeded to read them to her stuffed animals.

Some things I love about this book:

I love that Nora picked June and December. Sounds like June and December were good months, but what about the other 10? Also, is Nora clear on what month it is right now?

The other thing I love about this book (or at least watching Nora write it) is that it becomes clear that the convention of writing in a straight line from left to right is a constructed understanding. There are times when I think Nora will continue the word on the next line, because she's out of room, but she'll just keep writing even if it runs up against another word that is already there. Reading some of the things she writes can be easy if you're watching her write it, but if you just look at the finished object, it can be almost impossible at times to disentangle the jumble of letters and words going every which way. A child can be almost 5 and have several books a day read to her from the very day she was born and still not yet have internalized the straight line, back-and-forth way that we structure our writing.

It totally reminds me of an article called "students' spatial structuring of 2D arrays of squares." This is one of my favorite articles of all time. They showed how young children do not "see" the row-by-column structure in rectangular arrays that we assume. The assumption that students will see this structure is critical in our use of arrays for multiplication and area models. The article showed that this structure isn't "in" the array at all. It's a constructed understanding, one that we have so internalized that we don't realize that this isn't something you just automatically perceive. They had awesome pictures of kids' drawings that showed that some kids organized the arrays by spirals and other organizations that were mathematically unhelpful.

As von Glasersfeld said, "The cognitive organism shapes and coordinates its experience, and in doing so, transforms it into a structured world." Truly one of the most enjoyable aspects of parenting for me has been observing the ways in which this happens with Milo and Nora as they grow and assimilate their worlds. When I bump up against those times when their structuring of the world differs from my own, it reminds me again and again how everything, every last thing is constructed. It's a really awesome and powerful realization.

More conference adventures

I am traveling tomorrow. I have to fly to San Jose, and then drive an hour and a half south to Pacific Grove. Apparently there's a flash flood watch in effect tomorrow and through the weekend over the entire area where I'll be driving. Somebody told me that the bay area is expecting the worst storm of the year this weekend.

This should be something of an adventure!

I remember when I lived in California I loved it when the rain came. It was such a departure from the constant sun, which could start to feel kind of oppressive after a while. The rain always seemed cozy.

Bizarro Conference World

I just looked at my email from yesterday, and received 6 emails about this conference I'm attending this weekend and nobody has answered my simple question in all of those emails: "Where is the location of my talk?"

This is absolutely the weirdest, worst-organized conference I've ever encountered. I have given roughly 40 talks over the past years and never once have I encountered a situation in which a) I was randomly assigned a roommate (?!?), b) There is no information on the website or the program that includes room locations of talks, c) There may not be an LCD projector available (?!?). These three things are so bizarre that it never would have occurred to me to, for instance, worry about making sure there's actually a projector in the giant room in which I have to give the opening address to the entire audience of conference-goers for an hour. Not to mention, I'm still pretty ticked off about being invited to give this opening address and then being assigned a random roommate.

So back to the 6 emails. Apparently they have some system where they send out registration materials to conference goers, and I guess those registration materials contain all of the information, like, oh, where your actual talk is located. So I got this email saying, "remember to bring your registration materials or else we'll charge you $5 to reprint them at the conference site." I wrote back saying that I had never gotten any materials, which isn't surprising because I hadn't registered for this conference. (The person who invited me to give the address arranged everything.) Then I got repeated emails saying that I could pick up materials at the registration desk, but that desk closes before I am scheduled to arrive. So all I keep asking, over and over again, is this: "Registration closes before I am supposed to arrive. So can you just tell me where my talk is located, since it's at 8 a.m. the next morning? And can you confirm there will be a projector?"

No. Apparently they cannot do that. They just ignore that part of my question each time, and write back saying, "You can pick up your registration materials at the surf and sand building."

I am this close to just saying screw it and canceling my trip.

I Got Nothing!

I went to this tenure thing today, a thing for the mentors and department chairs about how to better shepherd people through the process. It was a 90 minute meeting and afterwards I was beat. I spent 90 minutes being nervous as all hell, which is insane because I already have tenure. I still haven't stopped feeling freaked out about the whole topic, though, apparently.

I didn't really learn anything new. A major message was basically, don't be arrogant idiots. Actually write a good case and explain shit to people and don't assume that everybody is all cool with your super jargony postmodernist lingo. This is definitely a message some of our department members need to hear.

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Good thing #1: Dinner out tomorrow!
Good thing #2: My mother comes on Wednesday!
Good thing #3: Tenure party for my colleague on Thursday!
Good thing #4: I go to the bay area on Friday!

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Tonight Nora sat down and made a shopping list. She spelled everything the way you'd expect a 4-year old to spell stuff, like "karits", but it all made sense. Shopping list: Food, potatoes, carrots, parsley, pickle. And probably another thing or two I can't make out. With the exception of "food", Nora doesn't actually eat any of those other things.

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I got another talk invite today, for a national professional development conference. With an actual honorarium and everything!

I think the moral of the story is that when you write 3 books for teachers through your national organization, people start to notice after a while and it starts to pay off. So that's cool, for sure. Except more travel, which, you know, work/family whatever bullshitty balance lame metaphor conundrum.

No, I haven't been drinking.

Ribald Repartee

Nora: Remember that snowman we made? His balls were so big!

(We did roll enormous snowballs to make the snowman).

*******

Me: Milo, come on upstairs. What are you doing?
Milo: I'm counting my balls! Argh, I only have 5!

(His new toy came with 6 little balls, so he was missing one).

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Coming in from getting the mail:

Me: Jake, you have a little package.
Jake: I beg to differ!

The Age of Pillow Forts

Hosting a Thanksgiving for 11 is not the same as preparing for a party of 40, but it's a lot of work so I spent much of the week getting ready. And I had two little helpers the whole way through.

On Wednesday the kids were chopping off the ends of the green beans for me. They were standing on their chairs, at the cutting boards, chopping and chopping those beans, very involved in their project. Milo said, "This is so much fun!" And I thought, this is why I had kids. I was waiting for this day, with the four of us in the warm kitchen, gravy bubbling on the stove, a pie in the oven, the cats winding around our feet.

Last night after dinner we played Apples to Apples, which, by the way, is sort of hilarious if half your crowd is from Turkey and they're not quite sure what "fabulous" means or who John Travolta is. Nora wanted to play too, so we gave her some cards and she'd throw a card in at random each time. She played the whole game with us, and somehow managed to mysteriously score more points than I did.

I can really get behind this age. Five is the age I've always dreamed about. You know what else? This morning, I heard Milo open his door at 7:15, so that means he slept in a little bit. 10 seconds later I heard Milo open Nora's door, which he does every morning. He always wakes up first, and then he goes into Nora's room and wakes her up. Sometimes when I get up I'll see the two of them sitting on Nora's bed, reading books. This morning I finally dragged myself out of bed at 7:30 and came downstairs to two quiet kids who were whispering to each other from inside the pillow fort they'd made out of the couch cushions.

Some days I have to get up right at 7 because I hear somebody yelling at somebody else, but other days I can lounge around until 7:30 while the kids play. And that, my friends, is pure gold.

Cardboard Swords

Milo's teacher talked to us about how he's been using inappropriate language at school. I don't mean cussing, but he's been saying aggressive things like "I'm going to kill you!" or "I hate you!" We haven't seen much of this at home, so I'm guessing he learned it at school to begin with, but we have heard some name calling, and hitting/pushing still remains an occasional issue with both of the kids.

The thing I discussed with his teacher is that traditional disciplinary measures like time outs or losing a privilege don't seem to work. Milo doesn't care about them all that much, he just accepts it as a tradeoff for acting how he wants to act. We already talk about empathy and how that makes the other person feel, and we rehearse through alternate things he could do, like saying, "I'm angry right now!" or "I don't like that!" or walking away, but clearly none of those are as satisfying to Milo as just saying something rude and aggressive.

The teacher didn't have great ideas, so I went home and thought about it. I decided to combine a reward system with loss of privileges, so that going a whole day using only kind words and actions can be a concrete goal. (I can totally embrace behaviorist principles when it suits me.) So we sat down and talked to the kids about how we're starting this new system up, and talked about why we're focusing on it because it's so important to use kind words and actions with others and find appropriate ways to be angry. I told them that if they could go all day with only kind words and actions (no name calling, no physical aggression), they'd get a star at the end of the day. If they used an unkind name or hit, pushed, etc., then they would lose the star and lose their iPad time. If they could go a whole week with a star every day, then they could pick out a special prize, like choosing a game we could all play together, or choosing a special video to watch. I made a chart and pinned it up on the wall and each night before bed, they put a star on the chart if they've earned it.

I knew the kids would need a lot of support, especially in the beginning, to remember to handle their conflicts appropriately. What I didn't really take into account was Jake. Basically it has ended up like this: On days when they're mostly with me, or with both of us but I'm there most of the time, they get a star. That's because I'm super vigilant about intervening early when they start to argue, reminding them about kind words and actions, modeling better stuff they can say, etc. I'm always on their case about it. On the days when Jake is watching them, or I'm gone for several hours and it's just them and Jake, they inevitably lose their stars. I totally should have predicted that. Jake is not the "early intervening to avoid a problem developing" type of parent. He's a "try to solve the problem after it has exploded" kind of parent. The kids can be 5 feet away devolving into an ever more heated argument and Jake would be oblivious, daydreaming about historical architecture or pirates or whatever he thinks about. It's only when somebody starts screaming/crying/bleeding that he'll come out of his reverie and look around to see what's going on.

So their chances of going a whole week with all stars and picking a prize seem pretty low, which is a bummer. But on the other hand, last night I got home from data collection and the kids were running around in their pajamas with a piece of string tied around their waists and cardboard swords hanging from the string "holsters". They were having a blast, playing with their swords and holsters. So yeah, Jake's not an early intervention kind of parent, but on the other hand, I'm not a "make a cardboard sword and string holster" kind of parent. Maybe the kids are lucky we're so different.

Full Circle

We've got 7 people coming over for Thanksgiving. So fun, but I'm wondering where we'll seat 11 people...times like this I wish I had just a liiiitle bit of a bigger house! 2 tables, maybe, one in the dining room and one in the living room? Or is that too weird and evocative of the kids' table?

We are getting ready. I bought the kosher turkey today and will start cooking tomorrow. It feels weird to prepare and roast a main dish that I won't be eating, but I can't host Thanksgiving without a turkey, right? We're also making about a thousand side dishes and desserts, and I bought a crapload of wine, so I think we'll be good to go.

I sent out a beg to our neighborhood listserve to borrow a card table - we'll see if the neighborly love comes through for me!

I love big groups at Thanksgiving, especially eclectic ones where you get to host the orphans who aren't going home. When I was in college my best friend of all time would invite me over to his house on Thanksgiving during the years when I didn't go home. His mother began hosting not only Thanksgiving dinners, but also regular Sunday night dinners for some of us college kids who lived far away from home. Those dinners are some of the greatest memories I have. My friend's mom was (is) this amazingly warm, smart, thoughtful woman, and she was just so darn motherly that she mothered all of us in her own way. Living in a dorm, it was such a treat to have these home cooked meals around somebody's dining room table, everybody crowded in and passing dishes and trading off the washing and drying duties afterwards. To this day that little house is one of my favorite houses in the world, and my memories of those friendly dinners and nerdy game-playing sessions afterwards are something to treasure.

Okay I'm starting to develop a complex

So first I get asked to give this keynote, but only because their first choice, Mentor, couldn't do it. Okay, fine, I have no problem being second choice for something like that.

Then I got invited to this fancy conference in Georgia, and I was all excited. But I just found out that they invited Mentor too, which is fine, but they offered him a $1000 honorarium and airfare! And they offered me zip!

Always living in the shadow of giants is kind of starting to get on my nerves.

4 and 11/12

Wow, the kids are going to be 5 in just one month. The years flew!

Sabbatical Fantasies

I have been thinking about my sabbatical activities, should my sabbatical be awarded for next year. I will have all of my normal research and advising duties, but being able to work from home and being freed from teaching and service should, I hope, lend a more relaxed pattern to my days. I have been thinking about focusing strongly on a) exercise, b) research/writing, and c) domestic activities, but lately I've also been contemplating using my time to learn something new.

What should the new thing be? I currently have two ideas. The first is developing a layperson's understanding of cosmology. I have always been super fascinated by the origins of the universe and related phenomena. I did take a special relativity course in college, actually, and understood fairly little of it. But I'm older now. I thought it'd be fun to read the lighter stuff, like Hawking's books for the general public.

The other idea I have is learning about ancient history. I am particularly interested in Greek and Egyptian history. I'm less into Roman history, although you can't get around that, but focusing on Greek history makes sense considering my interests and profession given the strong influence the Greeks had on the ways we think about philosophy, mathematics, and science even today. One tricky issue with this is that I've realized, as an adult, that I really love history, and the older the better. But the problem is that I am not very much interested in wars. Most historical treatments about anything seem to basically involve wars. I don't want to spend my sabbatical year learning about ancient Greek civilization via all the wars that were happening; this is why I found history profoundly boring in high school. So I guess I'd need some guidance on what to read and how to go about it.

Fantasizing about sabbatical makes me think about retirement. I've often thought that I will not retire, or only do so at a very old age. But if I do end up retiring at some point, it could be pretty awesome in its opportunity to afford time to engage in dedicated learning of various topics that interest me. Feels so luxurious! Of course I'll still have to work during sabbatical, so it won't be as luxurious as being retired, but it'll still be pretty luxurious (I hope!).

There Seems to be a Character Imbalance in the Books We Read

The question tonight that surprised me:

Nora: Mom, is there a Queen Arthur?

Run Milo Run

The other night Nora started puttering around, getting a pencil and some paper and muttering about how she wanted to write a message to Milo. I heard her ask Jake, "How do you spell CAN?" Jake said, "Ken, like Uncle Ken?" Nora said, "Yes" and Jake said "K-E-N".

The next thing I knew Nora came to me and showed me what she had produced:

"Run Milo run you can do it".

Oh my gosh, so cute! Why did she pick that message to give Milo? I elicited no reliable information from Nora to answer that question, but I just thought it was the cutest message ever to give to her brother.  It makes sense to me that Nora was spelling you as "yoo" and do as "doo", because lately we were looking at Halloween words like "boo" and "spooky", so it's logical to generalize that the "oo" sound comes from two o's.

*******

Here is an anecdote that I thought was cute, and almost posted to facebook, but then didn't because I thought it might be too offensive.

Milo is beginning to do a little reading as well. Tonight I was drinking some Diet Coke with our dinner of peanut stew and rice (which, BTW, is an awesome meal, so warm and hearty for fall, and vegan to boot). Milo looked at my bottle and said, "Cock?" Close, but no, Milo, I am not drinking Diet Cock.

*******

Today was a successful vegan day. For lunch I had leftover black bean and squash chili that Jake made a week ago, for snack I had an apple with hummus, and for dinner we had peanut stew and rice. It was all super satisfying.

I actually don't aspire to really be a vegan, but I would like to give up dairy. I think it'd still be okay to have some occasional goat cheese and eggs. I recently tried some vegan cheese substitute, and...meh. Not bad, but not good enough to feel like it really added anything.

*******

This weekend I sat down with the kids so that they could pick out a couple of recipes for us to make together. I am always trying various tactics to get Nora to eat a better variety of foods. Seldom do any of them work. One thing we do is cook together, which both kids enjoy a lot. This doesn't tend to result in Nora actually eating what we cook, though.

The kids picked bean burritos and peanut butter and jelly muffins. The burritos were just simple bean and cheese affairs rolled up in a tortilla. Milo liked it and ate a lot of it. Nora didn't like it.

The peanut butter and jelly muffins were a hit. They make use of pureed yams and carrots for the sweetness. Combine that with whole wheat flour, eggs, peanut butter, and other things and you've got most of the food groups in them. I might make them with sunflower seed butter next time so that I could pack them in their lunches. (No nut products allowed to go to school.)

*******

It was 65 degrees yesterday and sunny. We spent most of the day outside. The afternoon turned into an impromptu neighborhood party at the park, with parents standing around talking while the kids played chase and tag.

I feel kind of defeated at the thought of the upcoming 4 months of winter.

No Princesses

Milo likes to play some sort of royalty princess and knight game with some of the girls at school. Nora is totally not into any of that.

This morning I was getting dressed when Nora came huffing into the bathroom, all indignant. "Mom, make Milo stop! He keeps saying I am the princess and he is going to rescue me but I don't need any rescuing!"

Yup. Something tells me I'm not going to have to worry much about Nora's ability to stand up for herself.

Relief

Well, we really needed that. After what we've gone through over the past couple of years in our state, Jake and I needed to regain some faith in our state and our country.

I have only mentioned the election twice to the kids, once briefly this morning when I told them I was going to vote. That conversation quickly shifted to Milo's assertion that he intends to marry Amelia (a kid at school). But then he thought, and said, "But I have a lot of time to really decide who I'll actually marry." Yes, bud, you sure do - no need to decide it at age 4.

Anyway I guess Jake's stress earlier in the evening over the uncertain (at the time) election outcomes was subtly transferring itself to the kids, because when I got home from collecting data, Nora broke down crying over worry about the election. I couldn't believe it. It made me realize that this probably wasn't about tonight, it was about the last 18 months, the stress and anger and grief that Jake and I experienced and, I'm sure, unintentionally transmitted to the kids over the stuff that has happened in our state, and therefore in our careers, in our finances, and in our lives.

Time to keep fighting, but tonight we're celebrating.

Election Day

I remember 4 years ago I took Nora with me, as a baby, in a sling to the polling place. It was November and it was insanely warm. I wore a skirt and a t-shirt, and it was 75 degrees out and sunny. Incredible!

Today I dropped the kids off at preschool before voting. I'm wearing jeans and a shirt and a sweater and a jacket. When I got back home, it started snowing. I took a crummy picture out the front door with my phone. It might not be easy to see, but trust me, it's snowing.

Brrr! My grad students and I will be collecting data until 7:30 tonight. I imagine that'll be a good distraction as we wait for results.

My mother agreed to come out to watch the kids so that I can travel to CA to give the address to the California Math Council. Hooray! I've booked my ticket, I've booked my rental car, and I'm kind of psyched to return to the bay area even if it's just for a couple of days. I won't have time to see everybody, but I'll be returning in April for a longer stretch of time and will make up for it then.

Oh, also, it's an internet law that every facebooker, google+er, twitterer, and blogger must post an obligatory smug self portrait with an "I voted" sticker, so here's mine!

Talks

I just got back from a conference yesterday evening and my morning project meeting was cancelled, and now my lunch meeting has also been cancelled, which means I get to work from home! This is good because I am still recovering. It was awesomely fun, but I dragged myself down too much by staying up too late, getting up too early, never resting, and then fighting off a virus that's still lingering with me.

Because the conference was only about a 5-hour drive away, we chartered a bus and 21 of us traveled that way. It was so much fun to do it like that. We got a lot of chances to talk and play games and we even took some time on Thursday to do some transcript analysis. We were 4 professors (2 couldn't make it), 3 post docs, and the rest grad students, plus one of the post doc's husband and baby. They're all great and I feel so grateful to have such a vibrant, connected community here.

Now that I'm back I have 4 more speaking invitations than I had a week ago. Two of them are to give colloquia, and I'm excited to do them. One of them is at a university in the pacific northwest close to my family, so I'm thinking of trying to bring the kids and hopefully Jake and making a little trip / reunion out of it. One of them is in North Carolina and that one is exciting precisely because the invitation was issued from a giant in the field who I respect a lot. One of them is to a small invited conference, to act as a discussant on a paper and to lead a working group. That one is in Georgia and I feel compelled to go because the invitation came from another giant in the field, and the people who will attend will probably be all the right people for me to be spending time with. And then this morning I got an invite to give a keynote for the NCTM regional conference in Assilmar, CA in less than a month.

On the surface, sounds pretty impressive, right? A keynote? (Definitely a first for me). But no, it is not actually impressive because the only reason they want me to do it is because Mentor, who was scheduled to do it, had to cancel. So basically they emailed me saying, "Hey, the guy we really wanted can't make it, and your name came up as a good replacement." Uh...thanks? I'm not sure what to think about that. Jake would probably object to me taking another trip so soon. I'm not sure whether to do it or not. If it were closer I'd probably just do it, but it takes practically a day to travel out there anyway, which is tough for a 2-3 day trip. Meh.

The kids appeared to have had a great time at the indoor water park while I was gone. They have been telling me about all of the slides they went down, the colors of the slides, which ones twisted and turned, which ones were dark inside, and so forth. Jake said everybody had a nice time. It's good to be back with the kids and back with Jake. On the bus the grad students asked me about work/life balance and everything about that, for me, kept coming back to Jake and how solid he is and how that makes everything I do in my work possible. (Will he be solid enough to agree to let me go out to CA in 3.5 weeks? Time will tell...)

Halloween

Oh did the kids have a great time on Halloween today. Nora was Batman and Milo was Spiderman. After they got back, Milo found a little bag of Skittles in his candy bag that looked a lot like a bag of M&Ms. He saw the "S" on the bag and asked, "Are these called S&Ms?" No, my son, no they are not, but that'd be awesome if they were.

This afternoon a couple of grad students interviewed the kids about some math tasks. Nora went first and they started off by asking her to just count. She counted to 10, then to 20 when they asked her to keep going, then to 30 when they asked her again. Then finally she just said, "I can count higher than you think I can!" I realized that an important skill when interviewing 4-year olds would be to not laugh when they say funny stuff!

It has still been crazy busy. I am doing all of my duties and many of Mentor's as he spends his days and nights at the hospital with his son, who is very ill. Complaining about being busy and tired feels very trivial in comparison to that. Tomorrow morning, 21 of us are getting on a bus we chartered to go to the neighboring state for a conference. The bus has couches and stuff, and hopefully it'll be a fun time! One of my projects alone has 4 talks at this conference! Fortunately I personally only have to do one of them.

While I'm gone, Jake's parents are coming and then they're going to spend one night in a hotel in another part of the state that has an indoor water park. Jake seems pretty weary about the whole thing. Hopefully the kids will have a blast, though.

Jeans

Tonight I'm cutting Nora's bangs and she must have taken in parts of our previous weird conversation, because suddenly she says, "Mommy, when I grow up I'm going to look just like you, because I'm your daughter."

Me: You probably won't look exactly like me, but you might look something like me, because we share the same genes.

Milo: I have jeans too!

I don't remember identifying with my parents to this degree. How normal is this? Nora's attachment is still extremely strong, and she'd rather be with me than do anything else. She always wants me to play with her. I wonder if Nora is just wired a little differently than me in this manner. I remember being pretty independent. However, there is some glimmer of separation that rears its head sometimes. The other day, the kids were pestering Jake to watch a video. Jake said, "What's so great about videos anyway?"

Milo: Watching them.

Nora: And it gives us a little time away from you.

Me and Jake: ?!?

Jake: Well you don't need a video for that!

Me: By all means, you can have time to yourselves any time you want!

Nora & Milo: [Blank stares]

Tonight I was making dinner and Nora was in a foul mood. Milo was happily playing a game with Jake, but Nora didn't want to do that and instead preferred to be in the kitchen with me engaging in a non-stop monologue of complaints and hardships. I finally gave her a carrot to grate to keep her occupied. The next time I took a look she had grated away half the carrot, but tonight, at dinner, she actually ate some of the carrot. I think that might be a first.

I never even told her I was a vegetarian

Nora: Mommy, when I grow up, I am going to become the exact same person as you.

Me: ...?

Nora: And I will be a vegetarian.

Me: Well, you will probably be like me in some ways, but not in all ways, because you are your own person.

Nora: What?!?

Me: You might look a little like me, because you're my daughter, and you'll be like me in some ways, but different in other ways.

Nora: Mom, did you know that there are more bees in [our town] than there are people?

Kids. They switch so quickly from profound to unintelligible to mundane you get mental whiplash.

Questions

How am I going to have time to polish up field notes (must be done within a day before my memory fades), analyze two transcripts, compile survey/interview items across 9 project members' contributions, figure out homework and class activities for next week's 3-hour professional development session, finish my slides for an upcoming talk, and oh shit read those two massive articles I assigned to my reading group that I just remembered right this minute, all by Friday morning?

Why did I agree to lead this independent reading group? It's like a class without getting the credit for teaching a class.

Why did I choose two articles that were so long? Seriously, who writes an 82-page paper anymore?

Why did I forget that data collection is always hectic and a crapload of work?

Why am I working all day and every night until 11 but somehow not actually finding any time in the space of an entire week to actually write anything?

Seriously, WTF? Something is seriously off.

On top of all that, I just inherited Mentor's Friday morning grad seminar for the foreseeable future as he deals with a family emergency. This is something I am more than happy to help out with (and I volunteered to do it), but man I am really unsure about how I will find the time for everything.

Will I find time this weekend to complete the journal review that's due Monday?

How many emails have I neglected today?

And why does the cat keep tearing up the foam alphabet mat in the sunroom?

This Week

This week I drove down to a university about 2 hours away to give a colloquium. It made for a long day. I was nervous about it because I was giving the talk in a math department, and I'm always nervous that the mathematicians will be skeptical or will argue with my math -- even though that has yet to actually happen to me personally. However, the talk was well attended and everybody was nice. Only one person fell asleep. The questions were also nice ones, mostly along the lines of "Wow, I can't believe your 8th graders could do that stuff - could you come teach our calc classes for us? Har har har."

********

Yesterday we had some friends over with a 17-month old. Nora and Milo were pretty good with her, even though she's mostly still too little to play with them much. Being around a baby of that age reminded us of how good we have it now. No more diapers! Our kids can feed themselves! Life is good. The baby is adorable, but my goodness those first couple of years are a lot of work.

********

This week I had coffee with my student scholar. I am part of a program called the chancellor's scholars program for students of color and first-generation college students. These students were high performers in high school and received full scholarships to college. Once here, they are part of a highly structured program aimed at retention and fostering success while in college. The scholars must attend regular group sessions, become involved in service activities, meet regularly with an academic advisor, and be paired up with a faculty or staff mentor. I serve as a mentor and my scholar is now a senior. We were paired when she was an incoming freshman and back then it was difficult and awkward to mentor her. She was very quiet and somewhat shy, and I'm not typically outgoing enough to make it easy to draw quiet people out of their shells. So we would meet regularly and both struggle to find things to talk about, working hard to make conversation with each other.

In time, she began to develop a lot of questions about her academic decisions and issues, and we would discuss them. My scholar came in to college with two competing ideas about what she wanted to do with her academic career. One was driven by her family's expectations for her and her sense of what she should do to become successful. The other was driven by her internal sense of what she found interesting and what she wanted to do with her life. My job as I saw it was not to tell her what to do, but to listen and ask questions and help her figure out how to make her own decisions. In time, she ultimately chose a third way that was fairly different from either of the initial two things she wanted to do. Because the third way was leading her down a path towards future grad school and possibly academia, she became more interested over time about my life and work as a professor and what that's like. As the years passed we found it easier to talk to each other, picking up on common threads where we had last left off.

Now she is a senior and is not so shy anymore. It is easy for my scholar to make conversation, and she has a strong sense of herself and her future. She has been successful in college. She recently decided to delay graduate school for 2 years and join the peace corps after graduation. She will find out in a couple of months where she will be stationed. It has been awesome watching her grow and develop over the years from a shy, uncertain freshman to the confident senior she is now. Like everybody in her life, I'm eager to find out where she'll be stationed next year.

********

A house came on the market this week that looks awesome. It's a weird time to be on the market. Our market is highly seasonal is this academic town, so most houses sell in the spring and the early summer. On paper the house looks awesome so we're going to view it today. We'll see how it goes.

Big Legs

Tonight at dinner I was sitting on my knees with my legs folded in half, like I often do.

Nora: Mom, why are your legs so big?
Me: What? Big?
Nora: Yeah, they're so big.
Me: My legs aren't big, are they?
Nora: They are. Maybe you grew.
Milo: Oh! I know! They got big from a bug bite!
Me: ...Well, I like my big, powerful legs. They're strong and I can run fast.
Nora: I want big, powerful legs!
Me: Well, you can have that when you're a grown up.

My initial reaction to Nora's pronouncement was not exactly positive, but I'm glad that I had the presence of mind to then compliment my own legs. Body acceptance and even celebration is what I want to model for her.

Counting

At dinner I remark to Jake that I wrote 3,000 words today. Nora said, "3,000? Even I can't count that high, and I'm really extremely good at counting!"

The Good Things

I leaned on the fence and watched the horses and miniature pigs as I heard Milo and Nora scramble around on the giant haystack behind me. "Meow! Meow! We're cats! Only cats can come up here!" they called to one another, jumping from hay bale to hay bale with their friend M. Barn swallows fluttered in the rafters and one of the horses licked my hand with her giant, velvety tongue.

I hadn't wanted to come out to this party, the second of three scheduled for one weekend, but I was so glad to be here.

The day before I had gotten to work at 9 a.m. to attend a seminar, and then spent the next 8 hours literally going from one meeting / talk / discussion group to the next. At 5 p.m., I wondered how it was possible to be so exhausted and harried without actually having done any productive work -- or so it felt.

As I pulled on my hat and buttoned my jacket, I thought, "Maybe I should just go home. I'm too tired to have fun at the learning sciences party. What I really want to do is change into some pajamas and watch a movie." But I hate it when people say they're going to go to a party and then don't show up, so I knew I didn't want to do that to my friend throwing it. Instead of walking home, I turned right and walked to his neighborhood, kicking up piles of swirling leaves with my boots.

An hour later, full of wine and laughing until my stomach hurt about shared memories of my non-departmental mentor jabbing a giant needle into my ass during a conference in Chicago years ago, I was of course glad I had come. ("You really did go above and beyond the duties of a mentor," I told her. She said, "The craziest thing is that you're not even the first person I've done that for!") As the night wound down we talked about how unusual we have it here in the sense that all of the people closely and loosely related to my field actually get along, even though we cross disciplinary boundaries and don't share theoretical assumptions. Earlier that day, during  an independent study session, one of my grad students had told me that one of his favorite things about our program is how collegial the faculty are. He had come from a master's program in which that wasn't the case, which he found miserable. The grad student said, "I think this is pretty much the best place to be a grad student, period." Hooray, I thought. Finally a student who is happy and shares it!

After such a packed day it was difficult to drag myself out of bed and check off the endless list of chores that needed to be completed before we set out in the afternoon for a party at a farm 45 minutes from home. Groceries. Soup for tonight. Baking for Monday's faculty meeting. Cleaning. Ugh, and when am I going to find time to plant my tulip bulbs? Not to mention read my post doc's paper draft by Monday morning? I was harried and irritated as we piled the kids in the car and set off for the farm.

But oh. I forgot how beautiful it is here. I forgot about how, after 10 minutes of driving, you're in the country, passing farms and meadows and hills covered in trees with the leaves changing to orange, red, yellow. One of our new faculty members bought a small farm outside of a small town 40 miles from our university, and it is breathtakingly pretty. It was rainy and misty all day, but as we pulled in to his driveway I noticed the rain had stopped.

This is the view my friend sees every morning. He and his partner have a gorgeous farm house, a giant barn, and plenty of land for their horses, donkeys, miniature pigs, llamas, miniature goats, and too many dogs to count. As if that weren't enough, he also has, on his land, an old one-room schoolhouse founded over a century ago.

Inside are wooden floors, original moulding, and a wood-burning stove. A perfect place for a party.

Nora and Milo enjoyed petting and feeding the animals, but not as much as they enjoyed playing on the hay bales in the barn. If you're four, your can while away a whole afternoon playing in the hay.

After our fun in the hay it was time for food and drinks in the schoolhouse and, of course, no party is complete without puppies. Lots and lots of puppies.

Here Milo, have a puppy!

Don't mind if I do.

Cannot resist the puppy cuteness!

Driving home through the winding hills, Milo said, "I want to go back soon!" Nora agreed, "Yeah. I didn't think it was going to be very good, but that was a good party."

It's so easy to get caught up in the annoying things, and forget that I live and work in a place where people like each other, where there are miniature goats to pet, where my neighbors' kids can babysit, where I am still tempted to take photo after photo of the changing leaves every year, 8 years in.

Wanted

One time, many months ago, Nora asked me how I decided to have a boy and a girl. I explained that you don't get to decide what you get. Either you have a boy or a girl in your belly when you're pregnant, but you don't get to choose which. And sometimes you get to find out with an ultrasound before the baby is born. I explained that when we found out we were having a boy and a girl, we were so excited and happy, because I had always wanted both.

Nora was interested in that. "You always wanted a boy and a girl?" she asked. I explained, "Yes. I always wanted both a girl and a boy. So I was so lucky that I got to have you and Milo. You were exactly what I wanted!"

This story has stuck with Nora and she likes to revisit it. She'll bring it up at certain times and she likes to repeat the important parts. We'll be taking a walk, for instance, and Nora will suddenly pipe up, "Were you so lucky that you got to have a boy and a girl?" And I'll agree that I was so lucky, because that was exactly what I always wanted.

Or we'll be driving to the grocery store and Nora will ask, out of the blue, "Did you always want to have a boy and a girl? Were we exactly what you wanted?" And I'll say, "Yes. You are exactly what I always wanted!"

Nora likes to tell this story to herself. I think she likes to hear the story about how much she was wanted, and that I was so lucky because I got her and Milo.

And that sure is the truth. I want them to know how wanted they were. There is just one time in my life that I remember literally crying from happiness, and that was the time when we had our first ultrasound and our doctor told us that he saw two little sacs and two beating hearts. And I started sobbing, right there on the table, out of joy and relief. Some day I will tell Nora that story too. Two beating hearts.

Just what I always wanted.

Day and Night

Wow. Our short trip to New York was so much fun. Yesterday was post doc's 30th birthday, so we were in a celebratory mood all day. She wanted to do some cheesy things like visit Louis CK's comedy cellar and pizza place, so we did that. We also spent an hour after lunch wandering around the village and the meatpacking district. Lunch was at NYU's faculty club, which was ridiculously fancy for a midwestern yokel like me. (They gave me diet coke in a goblet.) Dinner was at a place called Jane, and it was pretty fabulous.

Neither of us slept much our first night for two reasons. One, it wasn't cold enough outside for the hotel heat to kick in, so our rooms were freezing. Two, our rooms must have been near the boiler room or something similar because all night long we were kept awake by continual clanking noises. However, being tired didn't really dissuade us at all. We were still happy to be there and excited about our meetings.

The other great thing about our trip is that our meeting was really productive. We have a new grant with colleagues at NYU, so this was our chance to lay out a game plan and get on the same page with next steps and theoretical ideas. I had been concerned about our collaborator because on the phone she is so talkative and such an interrupter that it's hard to get a word in edgewise. Because I was raised with the idea that interrupting is incredibly rude, I cannot make myself do it in normal conversation, and I find it offensive when others do it. Not explicitly -- I mean, I know that it's a more standard part of discourse in certain parts of the country and therefore not rude -- but implicitly it always makes me uncomfortable. However, it was much better in person. I left our day liking our collaborator a lot more, and feeling psyched about how we're pretty much on the same page with our ideas.

One silver lining of not having mentor be there is that I got to take the lead. When mentor is there, everybody else in the room automatically defers to him, and I am always relegated to #2. This isn't something he purposefully makes happen, and in fact he's actually good about deferring to me and promoting my ideas, but it's something that everybody else always does when he's around. And, frankly, when you're a senior person who is accustomed to everybody deferring to you and paying attention to you and looking to you for ideas, that's just your normal way of operating. Spending my whole career as second in command isn't something I really want to do. So setting up the tone for our grant moving forward on my own was actually a pretty nice opportunity. Later that night our collaborator said, "I noticed that never once during the day did you stop and say, 'I'll have to check with Mentor.'" Which is true, because we couldn't really avoid moving forward with making decisions, but now that I am back I'm trying to be careful to include him and ask for his input.

It's a good thing that I have my separate line of research apart from our joint stuff. My own line of research is my primary academic identity, by far, and I think it's good that our joint work is secondary.

At dinner we met up with our collaborator and her doctoral students and new professor and giant famous professor (also known as the guy who criticized my work after a talk in June, then read my paper this fall and kindly provided feedback, etc., etc.) It was a nice time and it was interesting to notice that giant famous professor seemed almost...shy? Just a little bit. Anyway, after dinner and drinks and going for a walk and snapping pictures and saying goodbye to folks, post doc and I wound up on our hotel steps. We looked at our watches and said, you know, it's only 10. Let's not go to bed yet! Let's just hop on the subway and go to Times Square! I know, again cheesy, but it was fun and bizarre and weird and fascinating to take that in. We walked all over the place, and rode the subway, and just enjoyed a sense of adventure on my post doc's birthday.

I could not resist taking photographs of Batman and Ironman because I knew the kids would be so freaked out to see them. Tonight, back home, I showed them the pictures and Nora said, "I can't believe you actually met the real Iron Man!"

Random disturbing event: Tonight, coming home from school, Milo asked if tomorrow is a home day. I said yes. Milo said, "Hah! Then Rosemary can't teach me a lesson tomorrow!" Turns out that his classmate, Rosemary, who is FOUR by the way, has told Milo that she's going to teach him a lesson.

WTF?!? I never know if stuff like this is normal 4-year old weirdness or genuinely disturbing evil bully behavior that should be communicated to their teacher. Milo doesn't seem all that worried about the lesson. He said, "If she is mean I'll just run away!"

It feels good to be home again, if only for 3 weeks. Sometimes I get a little bit stressed out about traveling but I have to say, what an awesome job that takes me to places like these and gives me the kinds of experiences and connections I get to have with people! It's pretty sweet.

Life is a Gift

Oh wow, it's only been a few hours but I am having a blast in the village! It is so beautiful! So fun! So exciting!

After we got to our hotel, my post doc and I took off walking around. (Digression: It was supposed to be me, Mentor, and post doc on this trip. However, Mentor had to cancel at the last minute because his son is in the hospital, hopefully to be discharged tomorrow. So this definitely stinks for him, and I'm sorry for him, especially since he was looking forward to the trip a lot. And it's hell to watch your kid suffer in pain. But it looks like his son should be okay in the end, and meanwhile, post doc and I have soldiered on without him.)

Anyhoo, so we took off walking and ran into about a thousand fabulous looking restaurants, and ended up eating in this nice cozy Thai place, warm inside while it rained outside. And the food was sooooooo good, as were the cocktails, and it was just awesome. Then we went for a walk in the rain around Washington Square Park and enjoyed the sights and sounds. Even the rain couldn't deter us.

My post doc and I are in the same frame of mind about living in NYC: Why have we never done that? How did I get to be as old as I am without ever having lived here? I know, the reality wouldn't stand up to the fantasy, but right now I am enjoying my fantasy.

My entire life, beginning with Harriet the Spy, I have read literature and seen movies and t.v. shows set in New York. It is such a common setting that walking around, I feel like I've already been here many times before. It all feels familiar, even though it's not. I feel like a more awesome version of myself just by being in this setting.

Now if only I could figure out how to turn on the heat...

Poor Family

Oh, goodness gracious. Poor Milo is sick. So today he's home with me and I cancelled my attendance at a seminar, I cancelled my every-other-week lunch with my advisees, and I'm skyping in to my meeting with my independent study students. And then I told my advisees I'd have lunch with them next week, which means I have to cancel my lunch date with my friend, and basically what I think this all means is that there is way too little wiggle room in my work schedule this semester to accommodate for sick kids.

But it's okay. I've got tenure, and it'll all work out.

Poor Nora felt so insecure at drop off this morning. She has been fine every morning but now, having to face a day without Milo, she felt scared and teary when it was time to say goodbye. Her teacher did a good job distracting her with a big bag of apples and talking about all of the comparing and counting they'll do with the apples.

Poor Jake has been feeling lousy too, so we haven't had much time together. We are trying to plan out a surgery he has to have, probably in the summer or perhaps the fall. It is an unusual type of corneal transplant -- or maybe I should say unique, because Jake's doctor is unaware of any other situation like his -- that requires a number of different specialists to coordinate their schedules. Then you also need to make sure there is a donor. Jake's doctor told him that summer is a good time because there are a lot of donors due to motorcycle accidents. (Ugh. I know, grim.)

The down sides: this is a complicated surgery that will require a long recovery time. The estimate is a month off work for Jake. I shudder to think about what that is going to be like for him, and how painful the recovery might be. The up side is, I guess, that if this happens in the summer or fall, at least I'll be on sabbatical. So I can afford the time to stay home with him, simultaneously taking care of both the kids and Jake for several weeks. The other up side is that if the surgery is successful, it will eliminate or greatly reduce Jake's pain. Currently he suffers from chronic daily pain and it is getting progressively worse over the years. The only possible solution is a transplant, and if that doesn't work they'll have to remove his eye. There is also a possibility that he could have a little bit of restored vision in that eye as well.

The whole scenario bothers me because Jake's specialists can't provide any good probabilities of success. So it's hard to know whether the difficult surgery and recovery process is going to be worth it in the end.

Obviously all of this blathering on means that I am worried about Jake. I hope it'll work out and he will be okay. It would be nice to see him not have to deal with pain every single day of his life.

Milo

This morning I woke up to the sound of Milo's door opening. I stumbled into the hallway and encountered Milo in the bathroom. He said, "I already made my bed and turned off my noise machine Mommy. Now I'm going to get dressed." He said this with a cute little smile on his face. I replied, "Wow, thank you! You're such a big boy!" and Milo grinned and wiggled with happiness.

Milo just loves to please. He gets this from Jake. Potty training Milo was a piece of cake because he lived for the simple reward of praise. He'd go on the potty, we'd jump up and down and clap and he would just be so, so thrilled at our pleasure. Boom; task completed.

Milo is just an easy kid in this manner. If you tell him to do something, he does it. If there's a rule, he follows it. A year ago we instituted certain basic chores like making beds, and by golly, that kid makes his bed every single morning before he even leaves his room. Milo is a normal kid like any other, which means that sometimes he acts out (especially when it comes to doing things like hitting his sister), and sometimes he freaks out over tiny things (getting frustrated when he can't get something to work just so). But these events are predictable and easily overcome. Milo can be distracted out of whatever's bothering him. He's just a straightforward, easygoing kid.

Milo is also cheerful as all heck. He smiles, he's open, he's a bouncy, happy little kid. I don't worry a lot about Milo, because I have this sense that life is going to be pretty good for him due to his easygoing, happy-go-lucky temperament.

That's not to say Milo isn't sensitive. He wears his heart on his sleeve. Currently, he's going through a phase of extra-strong attachment to Jake, so he feels very sad whenever Jake leaves. Yesterday morning Jake was around during breakfast, which was a break in the routine because usually Jake has left for work before the kids wake up. Yesterday Jake left later to go to the eye doctor, and as his car pulled away Milo started crying. He wants every day to be a stay-home-with-dad day. But, on the up side, Milo is easily distractible. I suggested we use the time to wrap some presents for Daddy's birthday, and that was enough to cheer him up.

Milo is a big boy now, all long legs and arms flying in every direction. Sometimes I miss the roly poly big tummy toddler Milo, the Milo who would still consent to cuddle with me and snuggle on my lap. Now I have to make due with a brief hug in the morning when we say goodbye in the classroom, and carrying him up the stairs each night. Nora still wants as much contact with me as she always did. She wants to be in my lap, she wants to hold my hand, touch my arm, sit close. Milo, though, is no Mommy's boy. He'd rather wrestle with Dad, thank you very much, and I have to content myself with kissing him on the forehead every night when we say goodnight.

Lovely Colleagues

Lovely Colleague #1: We went to coffee and she gave me all sorts of literacy tips and tricks. She also happens to have a big private library of true beginning reader books (much more beginning than the level 1 books in the store), so she let me take out a bunch of books from her collection for Nora to read on her own. It's like we've got this extra library of books for new readers right in our building, and I never knew!

Lovely Colleague #2: Today we were in a meeting. LC2 and I had our laptops open and were typing away. The leader of the meeting suggested that we have somebody take notes during the meeting. She said, "How about Amy do it, since she has her laptop open." I was about to agree when LC2 said, "Actually, let's subvert gender norms and I'd be happy to take notes instead of Amy." Oh, LC2, you are pretty much the only guy ever who has noticed that it is always a woman who gets asked to take notes. Not only did you notice that, but then you stepped up to interrupt that norm. You are genuinely awesome.

Smokers and Apple Picking

It's decided. Nora is Batman for Halloween and Milo is Spiderman. Is this karmic justice for my lifetime of disdain for dudes in their parents' basements who are way too into comic books?

The firefighter theme is still strong with the kids, too.

They've got their fire hats, their fire boots, and their "smokers". Smokers are what you put over your face when you're in a lot of smoke, of course.

In a related note, it's so hard to get these kids to stand still for a picture! 

Good things about my life right now:

1) I had to do this filming project today, and I've been kind of dreading it for a while now. So I'm happy that it's over. I did it once before a couple of years ago in Arkansas and wasn't super thrilled with how it turned out. I'm hopeful that it turned out better today, at least in terms of me looking a little less goofy.

2) I get to see President Obama speak live on Thursday. I got my ticket this morning. Exciting!

3) I get to go to NYC on Sunday. Exciting! The last (and only) time I was there was in the 90s as a chaperone on a Model UN trip. There's only so much you can see while trying to keep track of a couple dozen high school kids. Of course, this is a work trip so it's not like we'll be out and about a ton, but I'm still excited to go. 

4) The kids get to go apple picking tomorrow. I'm just loving autumn. Apples, pumpkin patches, changing colors, warm days and cool nights, football games, cider, squash. Maybe I'll even get some decorative gourds and artfully arrange them on my front stoop. Okay. No. Who am I kidding.

That's a Good Question

Why did I think it was acceptable to agree to an itinerary that involved a half-hour layover?

Well, here are positive things to keep in mind: if I miss my flight, I'll get home eventually. It's early enough in the day that I'll hopefully get on another flight. And it's an open, empty Friday so being late won't be a disaster.

Whaaa?

This was just supposed to be a colloquium, not another stealth interview with a hard sell to try to get me to think about moving!

I doubt this is one I'll pursue, though.

Outlaws

Tomorrow I'm going to smallish midwestern college town. I'll be there for a couple of days to give a colloquium and stuff. My hosts are actually hosting me in their house, which was a first. Well, this did actually happen one other time, at a university that was a big football university. My first night in that town, there happened to be a game and all of the hotels were booked up like a year in advance, so they put me and Jake up at their house. Anyway, this time, the hosts said, "You could either stay in a hotel, or you could stay with us, and either would be fine." And I said, "Uh, okay, either is fine with me, whatever's easier." So, yeah, I'm staying at their house. Anyway, I'm looking forward to it; my hosts are super awesome smart scholars who do really cool work.

Here is an interaction typical of Jake and his mom. His mom called him up, at work, to tell him we should go up north to stay with them this coming weekend. It might be the last non-freezing weekend of autumn! We should go up there! Jake said no, we're pretty busy. His mom kept pestering him. She called back, and again pressured him to have the family go up there. He said, that wouldn't work well because Amy's out of town and isn't returning until Friday anyway. (Mistake mistake mistake!) 

Note that his parents were just here a couple of weeks ago. Basically they show up when they want, with little notice to us. They see the kids every few weeks throughout the summer.

So then she's all, oh, then I'll come down there to "help"! And Jake is all, no, that's fine, she's only gone for a couple of days and the kids are in school anyway so you wouldn't be able to spend any time with them. Jake doesn't want her here because having her here, especially without his dad along to entertain her and smooth things over, is enormously stressful for him. His mom has a lot of needs and taking care of them is a lot of work. She needs three full hot meals a day, planned out in advance, plus snacks. She needs constant entertainment - like, she can't handle just hanging out at the park for an afternoon. Any day must be packed with activities. Taking care of his mom's needs is more work for Jake than simply taking care of the kids on his own, which is why he kept telling her that there was no need to come down, it wasn't worth it for such a short trip, etc.

However, his mom wouldn't take no for an answer and Jake is incapable of standing up to her or ever putting his foot down with her. So therefore, she is now coming down here tomorrow.

An additional stressor is that Jake's mother is unreliable. She will help with the kids when it suits her and isn't too boring, but if something else comes up that is more to her convenience, she'll change her plans at the very last minute, or even spontaneously. So we've learned to never tell the kids in advance that Grandma and Grandpa are coming. If she gets offended or perceives an insult, she has been known to suddenly just pack up and leave in a huff.

For instance, a couple of years ago she and Jake's dad came down for Halloween. They wanted to be here to take the kids trick or treating. They got here in the morning. At some point in the morning they became offended over the issue of a coffee pot. Jake's mom dislikes his coffee pot because it is too small. (I don't drink coffee, and our kitchen is small, so Jake has a small coffeepot for himself. That means when there are several people here who all want multiple cups of coffee, you have to, uh, run the coffee pot more than once? Or whatever. I don't know how these things work. I think the issue is that it takes more time.) Anyway, she didn't like how it takes longer, so she had told Jake that she wants to give him a new coffee pot for his birthday. And Jake said, no thank you, we don't have room for a big coffee pot. I like my small one. Then they showed up with a present for him - a huge coffee pot. And we were both sort of like, oh. Maybe we can store it in the basement and then when you stay with us, we'll bring it out and use it. Jake's mom got really offended about our reaction to the coffee pot and the next thing I knew, I came down from upstairs and they were pulling out of the driveway! At, like, 11 a.m.! And I'm all, uh, weren't they staying here tonight to take the kids trick or treating? And Jake said, I guess she felt unwelcome or unappreciated so they decided to leave. (Try explaining that one to your kids.)

So, now I will be gone, and Jake gets to handle his mom. He is now stressed out about this, but it's what always happens. Jake can't say no to her or upset her. He is constitutionally incapable of conflict in that way. This puts me in a rather tough position, as you might imagine, especially when her requests / suggestions are unreasonable. Basically, I try to stay out of it as much as I can.

My major goal is to not discuss any discomfort or negative experiences / feelings around the kids. So I stick with the facts and act upbeat and cheerful about Grandma and Grandpa visiting. I don't want my deep dislike of Jake's mother to influence the kids or infect their relationship with her. Hopefully, they will have a happy relationship with their grandparents and have happy memories of times with them. I don't want to poison that or take away their opportunity to enjoy being at Jake's childhood home and spending time with Jake's family. Since they're only 4, it's easy now. I hope that as they get older they'll still have good experiences. Jake's mom's particular brand of irrational selfishness has, of course, affected the kids, but not in ways they've really noticed or been aware of yet. Hopefully it'll stay that way. If it doesn't, I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.