Probably, we shouldn’t have let him watch so much Gene Kelly

09Jan09

The dubious influence, also my favorite dance clip of all time:

The result:

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Joy, uncompromised

07Jan09

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Chaos, unleashed

07Jan09

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4-Year-Old Economics

15Dec08

Finn is addicted to catalogues.  He’ll sit with one for close to 45 minutes, pouring over the pictures. When I step outside to fetch the mail, he calls out before I’m even fully back inside, “You have new catalogue for me?”

I don’t mind so much, and I’m completely spellbound by his ability to figure out what a new toy is and how it works simply by observing a diagram. He is absolutely spatially gifted, and it’s sort of a marvel to watch.

But he has also caught on to value.  He asked recently, “How many dollars this cost?” pointing to, say, a glow-in-the-dark-motorized marble run.

“A lot,” I answered.

“I get it for Christmas, then,” he concluded. “It cost a lot of dollars, Santa bring it.  It cost one or two dollars, we just get it now!”

I think he must be living in a different family from the rest of us.

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The Family Thanksgiving Movie

30Nov08

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Catholic School + Deductive Reasoning=The End of Childhood

26Nov08

Ella, age 6:  “Mom, do you know about Saint Nicholas?”

Mom: “Yes.”

Ella:  “Saint Nicholas was Santa Claus. He gave presents to people. He was a saint.”

Mom: “That’s right.”

Ella: “And Saint Nicholas is dead. That means Santa is dead. That means there isn’t any Santa Claus.”

Mom: “Then where do all your presents on Christmas morning come from?”

Ella: “Your grandparent go out at night and buy all the presents and wrap them and that’s that.”

So at least her dad & I are not responsible this year.

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Tags: saint nicholas, santa claus

Final thoughts on what it was like to live through the adminstration-that-must-not-be-named

19Nov08

Everybody Tells me Everything By Ogden Nash

I find it very difficult to enthuse Over the current news. Just when you think that at least the outlook is so black that it can grow no blacker, it worsens, And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.

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Tags: everybody tells me everything, ogden nahs

Gen X Raising Gen O

18Nov08

The new project, dedicated to parenting in the nation’s service:

Generation X Raising Generation O

Come visit, read, discuss.

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Tags: Generation O, Generation X, Raising Generation O

Generation X raising Generation O: Exhibit B

13Nov08

Shortly after the election, Finn and I were shopping for a birthday gift for his cousin at Keplers, our excellent local independent bookstore.  I was browsing books and word games, Finn was plopped in front of the craft and toy section, which included many coveted items, like a “paint your own race car” set…

But on our way up to the register, Finn stopped dead in his tracks and pointed wide-eyed at a volume tucked away on the shelving under the display tables, right smack in the center of his sight-line

“Obama!” he exclaimed, for maybe the 20th time that day–yard signs being in abundance in our neck of hte woods.

I squatted down next to him and saw a handsome book with a cover illustration of the White House.

“What are you looking at?” I prodded.

“That the White House!” he said. “That where Obama lives!” Then he paused and looked thoughtful for a second. “He there yet?”

“Not yet,” I said, “but soon.”

I thumbed quickly through the book, which is an excellent compilation of illustrations and stories about the First Family’s home.  It quickly rose to the top of my “must-have” books for Ella and FInn.  It’s a fun and literate way to continue to connect them to the President-elect they love so much, and to begin to educate them in an accessible way about the history of the Office.   Why not capitalize on their enthusiasm?  Or more precisely, on my own.  If I’m teaching my kids how to eat, and how to sleep, and how to dress themselves and cross the street, and about their church and larger communities, why not seize this opportunity, and teach them a little about democracy, too?

But I had already surpassed my book budget for the day, so I will be leaving a note for Santa.

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Tags: "Our White House", Barack Obama, kids and politics, white house

Generation X Raising Generation O, or The End of Irony?

12Nov08

Obama’s election changed our lives.

Not just the fact that we donated to a political campaign for the first time ever.  Nor that my 6-year-old raised ten times her age in campaign donations with her Lemonade for Change stand…but it is now quite clear to me that their (okay, our) deep engagement with all things Obama, even all things American has become an ongoing, intergral, even unconscious part of our family life. At least for my deeply unironic children.

Exhibit A:

Driving home from school and yesterday with my 4-year-old, Finn spied, towering over Ben Franks, the local drive-in hot dog stand, “That American Flag!”

I peered through my window at the flag, which was tattered at the edges, but still, undoubtedly, an American flag. “Yes, that is an American Flag.”

“That same flag Obama has!”

“Yes, it is,” I answered.

A few seconds later, more thoughtful, he announced, “I want American flag.”

“You have an American flag,” I said, glad that I could guarantee that we were not wholly unpatriotic. “In one of your toy bins.”

The flag in question was a leftover small flag, perhaps one of our purchases in support of Lemonade for Change, perhaps from someone else’s long past Fourth of July celebration.  It was a flimsy polyester thing, on a wooden dowel. He knew exactly the flag to which I referred.

“NOT I want small flag.  I want big flag.”

“What would you do with a big flag?” I asked.

“Put it on a pole in my grass,” he answered, as if it were obvious.  Which to him it is. For me, skeptic, former activist, to whom patriotism often meant protest, this was a defining moment, a real revolution in the difference between how my children will see their President–and thus their country–and how I have for much of my adult life.

But why not be proud?  Why not stick a flag in our lawn to usher in the new era?

Reader, stay tuned. Change has come.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Children's politics