Painting the Planets

We recently went to Chincotegaue Island and on the way stopped at NASA Wallops Island. During her turn through the gift shop, Celeste really wanted a model of the solar system. It was a pretty simple snap-together kit with glow-in-the-dark paint. Flash forward a week (we had to wait until we got home, and then for an afternoon when I was home to help her with it) and we snapped things together and then the painting began ...

Less Loved Than a Lima Bean

When Quinlan is feeling under the weather or overtired, she can get quite mean. Tonight, after a day when Evelin was sick and thus not as available to Q as the little one would like, she was in rare form.

After telling me that she didn't love me and musing as to why Mumma couldn't have have married someone else^*, Quinlan started listing out the only people she loves:

1. Her Kindergarten Teacher


2. Her Best, Best Friend in Kindergarten


3. Old Blankie (the blanket she's had since she was an infant


4. Her Other Best Friend in Kindergarten

She then made a point of telling me that she didn't love me at all. Testing her resolve, I asked which she loved more, me or lima beans; she replied, without a pause, "Lima beans."

I then asked if she loved Mumma more than lima beans; she said no. I asked again, and she realized she was confused, because she does love her mother more than lima beans. She slotted Evelin in around No. 100 on the list of people she loves best.

After a few minutes of calmness, Quinlan burst into a sob: "I can't love Old Blankie third!" (Sorry Best, Best Kindergarten Friend; you're number three now.) As she reorder the top of her list, she threw out Evelin's name as being No. 20; then she quickly changed it to No. 10.

I, however, remained less loved than lima beans.

A bit later, after Quinlan had fallen asleep, I went to check on Celeste, who could hear most of the conversation through her wall. I asked if she loved me more than lima beans and did a bit of a snort laugh before saying "You, of course." (To be fair, I knew how she'd respond: the girl dosen't at all look forward to fall, when the farmer's market has fresh baby lima beans that I love to cook up by the quart with shallots and tons of olive oil ...)

After a short pause, Celeste asked: "Daddy? Do you love me more than lima beans?"

"Well, lima beans are really good ... but I love you more."

^* I told her that Mumma and I had fallen in love, and she starts in with a sing-song taunt: "Mumma fell in love."

An Authenticity Crisis

Today's lesson in not making assumptions ...

I stopped in to D.C. Sandwich to pick up two banh mí for lunch (one đậu hủ chay and one bì chay) and had a brief moment of concern when the order ticket was written with a note that looked (to my inexpert eye) like hangul at the bottom. Should I be concerned about the authenticity of the sandwiches? (And really, what does "authenticity" mean or matter when you're talking about a really tasty sandwich?)

I'd asked for no hot peppers on the banh mí, and from the context that would seem to explain the writing. However, I couldn't figure out what the characters were; 으아 was as close as I could get, but that makes no sense and there appeared to be another stroke or two in 아, like a poorly formed/out of proportion 감 or something. (Google Translate renders 으아 as "whoa" ... which I guess could mean "no jalapeños," but that would be some really odd diner slang. 오감 is "five senses," which would seem to be a request for more heat, not less.)

Flipping through a dictionary and Google Translate, I couldn't find any rendering of capsicum (고추류) or jalapeño (할라페뇨) or something similar in Korean that it might be the equivalent of hot pepper. Then I looked at Vietnamese words for hot peppers, wondering if it were a hangul rendering of a Vietnamese word, and came across ớt ... and then pretty quickly realized my mistake ... the first character wasn't 으 or 오 or 우 or anything similar, it was an underlined zero — 0 ớt.

The Scottish Tian Tian

It's been seven years since I was a behavior watch volunteer at the zoo. I had to experience all the excitement surrounding the arrival (and departure) of 太山 — Tài Shān, fondly known as 黄油条 (buttersick) — over the fence as a regular visitor to the zoo instead of through the behavior watch camera lenses.

Despite not being there twice a month, I do pay attention when I see mentions of 美香 (Měi Xāng) and 添添 (Tiān Tiān). So imagine my surprise to get an email from Moray Firth Radio offering the chance to win a panda mask:

Celebrations are underway to welcome two very special giant pandas to Scotland... Tian Tian and Yang Guang or 'Sweetie' and 'Sunshine' are the first two giant pandas to live in the UK in 17 years. As part of the celebrations, we're looking for your ideas on what would make the ultimate Scottish welcome for Tian Tian and Yang Guang.

What‽ 添添 is going to leave D.C. to shack up with some other Ailuropoda melanoleuca?

Thankfully that turns out not to be the case. The Tian Tian who now calls Edinburgh her home (at least until 2021) is eight-year-old 甜甜 (Tián Tián) with a rising tone (2) instead of the level (1) tone in添添. Her partner is eight-year-old male 阳光 (Yáng Guāng). It does mean, however, that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tian_Tian_(giant_panda) is going to need a disambiguation page soon.

Power's Out and Back

So Hurricane Irene blew through this weekend (just days after an earthquake, which added to the fun for the weather-phobic second grader). The biggest problem we had was a 23-hour power failure and about five bags of mostly sticks and twigs.

The girls were a little apprehensive trying to fall asleep without power on Sunday night (the power failure happened around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, while the girls were asleep — although Evelin and I were awake, watching the downed line melt the sidewalk —), but they were doing well ... until about 8:05 p.m. when the power flickered back on for about five minutes. Quinlan jumped up and started her "Disney Princess: Ultimate Song Collection", then hit pause to move her blanket and pillow to her preferred sleeping spot on the floor, head next to the air conditioning vent. Sadly, the power cut back off before she could hit play on the CD player, and Q — had to fall asleep without the dulcet tone of Belle and Cinderella.

Flash forward to about 11:30 p.m., and I sit straight up in bed; certain it is 8:something in the morning and we've all overslept. Turns out, no, we hadn't overslept the power had just come back on ... and we'd fallen asleep with most of the lights in our bedroom on. I got up, reset the clock and alarm, turned off the lights that had been inadvertently turned on downstairs, and then went back to sleep.

Flash forward to about 4:45 a.m. I had woken up about 20 minutes earlier and was downstairs making lunches, filling the dishwasher, and a few other chores that required electricity, when I heard Quinlan's princess CD start up. She wakes up early sometimes (and this was quite early, especially since school was cancelled for the day due to wide-spread power failures), but I wasn't going to try arguing with her about it ... and I was hoping she'd fall back asleep.

Flash forward an hour to about 5:45 a.m., Quinlan comes downstairs weeping: "Daddy! I can't fall asleep ..." I told her that it was really early, but it was morning and she could be awake if she wanted. A very excited little girl then spent a good bit of time jumping around and bouncing off the walls — she still thought it was the beginning of the night ...

Conversations From the Backseat

This morning, on the way to the Girls Rock! DC camper showcase at the 9:30 Club ...

Celeste: Lightbulb!

Quinlan: Celeste. Why did you say "lightbulb"?

Celeste: I just say "lightbulb." You know, like when some people say "holy crap"? I say "lightbulb."

When Theories Hit a Wall

literally ...

I went to tell Celeste good night tonight and ended up knocking over a bit of her furniture. Rewind (that's probably the best idea). After running tonight (and spending some time sitting around in the backyard cooling down), I went upstairs to tell the girls good night. While talking with Celeste, she mentioned that earlier in the week, she'd been spinning around in her room and it made the ceiling fan slow down.

Never being one to pass up the opportunity to explain a physics concept that I'm probably not 100% on top of, I decided it was a good opportunity to explain Einstein's theory of special relativity and how, if one rotates under a ceiling fan in the same direction as the fan then the blades will appear to slow down or, if the speed of rotation at the point of observation matches the speed or rotation, stand still.

To be completely fair, I didn't use the phrase "special relativity" or even "relativity" in the conversation and I may be misremembering or misunderstanding the concept. However, that's all moot because of what happened.

As I tried to explain to Celeste how movement of the observer could influence the perceived motion of the fan, spinning around in a circle, I got progressively dizzier and dozier until I found myself falling over and crashing into her dresser and toy chest.

Aging is a Mental Construct

Tonight Quinlan agreed to let us start reading the Chronicles of Narnia with her. She'd heard parts of the radio play version before, on a long car trip or two when we'd been reading the books with Celeste, but she was worried that the books would be too scary or something. Tonight, however, I started in with the first two chapters of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (yes, we’re sticking with the original publication order) and at first she wasn't paying too close of attention but as soon as Mr. Tumnus starts in with his confession of betraying Lucy, she was riveted.

Until that point, she was paying attention, but not really immersed in the story. This isn't atypical for her. She listens to a story, but is trying to put it into context within her mind and interrupting with lots of tangential observations.

Tonight, Quinn interrupted me when Mr. Tumnus was trying to determine where Lucy appeared from and wondering where the land of Spare Oom and the bright city of War Drobe are and he makes the comment "if only I had worked harder at geography when I was a little Faun, I should no doubt know all about those strange countries."

Quinlan wanted to know what he meant by "if only ..." and I told her that he was saying that you could only learn things when you were little. But I quickly noted that that was a silly idea that people can and do learn things when they’re 6 or when they're 100.

Which, of course, is when Quinlan's brain started churning.

Q: "Daddy? How old is Grandma Lu?"
C: "Grandma Lu is going to be 97 this year."^*
Q: "That's crazy. Because Grandma Lu uses a wheelchair, and Ms. Susan doesn't need anything like that."
C: "Well, Ms. Susan isn’t anywhere near 100."
Q: "No! Not Ms. Susan [the neighbor who is helping watch her this summer], Ms. Susan the teacher [from nursery school/pre-K]! "
C: "Oh, that's right, she’s 103."
Q: "No, Daddy, 102."

Last fall, Ms. Susan had a bit of fun with her students (or at least with Quinlan) and confided that she was 102. She’s not. But you cannot convince Quinlan of that fact.

Eventually, we decided that Ms. Susan wasn't a spry 102-year-old because of the rabbit at school or because she worked with kids ... turns out she's just luckier than Grandma Lu.

^*I simplify for the purposes of blogging; in fact, it took a moment to figure out which great-grandmother she meant — I should have known it was the only one who is still alive; and once that was settled I said 94, getting her age wrong by a few years.

Up Too Late

On the way to school this morning, I was telling the girls that I hadn’t had enough sleep the night before. I went out with some friends for a late 3D showing of Thor and didn't get home until about midnight, so only about five hours of sleep before the day started.

Celeste said that wasn't good because people need "seven or eight or nine or ten or eleven hours" of sleep. I agreed, but noted that as people age they generally need less sleep, although five hours still wasn't enough.

I also said that some people need more sleep than others, some people do fine with less sleep, and some people think they do fine with less sleep, but really need more sleep.

At which point, Quinlan pipes up: "That's me!"

Nightmares

Celeste just work up crying because she dreamt that "someone cut down all of our curly tree," referring to our Harry Lauder's Walking Stick (Corylus avellana 'Contorta'), which she loves to play under, picking leaves for the fairies to use as dresses.

Fortunately, it was a fairly easy matter to let her look out our bedroom window and to see that the tree was fine — excepting a few places where someone's pulled off too many leaves.

Yesterday morning, Quinlan woke up screaming. When I went to comfort her, she kept pushing me away, saying she wanted Mumma instead. When I pointed out that Evelin had already gone to work, she cried harder for a little while and complained that I didn't feel as good as Mumma does.

Eventually she calmed down enough to tell me about the dream; I think, she wasn't entirely awake because her explanation seemed still "in the moment."

Apparently, there was a wolf-dog "over there" (pointing at the wall) that was going to bite her neck. My first attempt was to remind her of the very wolf-looking German shepherd dog we met at the farmers market a few weeks ago, but she wasn't looking to like this wolf-dog and she started crying some more.

I then told her that I wouldn't let the wolf-dog hurt her and that I would scare it away ... which, apparently, is why I am not as comforting for her as Evelin is. Quinlan shouted: "Mumma would cut it's head off with a knife!"

Princesses in the Morning

I'm no monarchist by any means, but I am clued in to mass culture enough to know that the royal wedding was happening on Friday morning. So, when Quinlan woke up at 5:45 a.m., ready to go for the day, I decided to let her watch some of the pomp and circumstance.

Long ago, I lost the battle against Disney princesses a long time ago, unfortunately. It started when Celeste went to kindergarten, and in a way we thought her interest in Cinderella, et al., was good in that it was a socialization and acclimation to her peers sort of a thing. But Quinlan, oh Quinlan, really feel hard for the princesses at nursery school. I'd prefer they had stuck exclusively to Miyazaki's œuvre, much of which they do like, but since they haven't, we've tried to steer them towards the stronger characters — more Mulan and Pocahontas (despite the problems it has) than Snow White and Cinderella — with varying degrees of success/failure.

Despite my misgivings, I have tried to use real-life royals as examples of how princesses can differ from the Disney ideal. For example, when Celeste was in the nascent phase of refusing to wear pants, I tried showing her some pictures of Princesses Catharina-Amalia and Princess Alexia of the Netherlands and Princess Madeleine of Sweden to show her that real princesses can wear pants, even jeans. It didn't really work; she still likes to wear only dresses or skirts.

Despite not knowing a Mountbatten-Windsor from a Montblanc pen, Quinlan was fascinated with the pomp and the ceremony.



There were a lot of questions — I had a lot of trouble explaining primogeniture and why the Duke of Edinburgh isn't the King — but she was entranced by it. When I went to wake Celeste around 6:15 a.m. to see if she wanted to watch any of a royal wedding, she said "That's okay, but Quinlan probably will want to see it" ... and she was right.

Measure Both Ways

So the washer and dryer that came with the house have seen a lot over the years, especially since the kids arrived in 2004 and 2006, including nearly burning down the house and flooding the basement. But the time finally arrived to replace them both. Based on recent experiences of fellow HVL parents, we went with a front-loading washer and a matching dryer (both Kenmore units — a Model #79640272900 washer and a Model #79680272900 dryer), and they were delivered today.

All in all, it went smoothly. Since there wasn't anything complicated going on — just connect the hoses and plug in the machines — I handled the install. It went fine with just one little mistake (getting the hot and cold supplies backwards) that was easily corrected.

The place we had some unexpected difficulty was the delivery. I made sure to measure the doorway to the basement and to compare it with the size of the washer and dryer. I knew it would be tight, but thought we'd be good ... and we were once the screen door and the basement door were removed ... and with only a little scratching of the paint. (Always remember to measure two dimensions when comparing an appliance to the doorway.)

Up Above the World So High ...

Quinlan had a rough time getting to sleep tonight. She started off the night being a bit goofy and playing around. She tried to dive on to her bed and misjudged things, hitting her face against the footboard and resulting in many tears.

After some bedtime stories and a little snuggling, she was supposed to get to sleep ... which isn't exactly what happened. Instead, she spent a bit of time crying and complaining. Evelin and I both tried to calm her down, but she was a bit irrational. First she was scared of the light, then scared of the dark. After a bit of discussion about how you can't have the light "in the middle" — you either have the light on or off, the same way you can only either be on a horse of off a horse — I tried raising her shade, figuring the outside light would be bright enough to not be dark without actually being light.

Despite it being a bit cloudy, Quinn was sure she could see a star, so she started singing:

Twinkle, twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are
Up above the world so high
Like ... Hey! It does look like a diamond ...

Playing With Language

Celeste and Quinn have a new game where they take apart a word and look at the different phonemes/components.

During lunch today, Quinn started with zinnia: "If it didn't have /ə/ it would be zinny; if that didn't have /i/ it would be zin; if it didn’t have /zɪn/ it would be nothing!"

Then Celeste moved on to sunshine: "If it didn't have /sʌn/, it would be shine; if it didn't have /ʃaɪn/, it would be sun."

Then Quinn tried grass: "If it didn't have /gr/ it would be ass. Daddy, why are you laughing?"

Give Me a ג

So Celeste found a book about Channukah in the free book pile at the pool and has been reading through it. This morning she was reading it during breakfast, so entranced by the story of the Maccabees that she couldn't eat her toast. Plus it irritated Quinlan that Celeste wouldn't let her look at the pictures.

I took the book and read to the both of them while they ate, and when it got to the end and a discussion of the dreidel game, Celeste really wanted to make one and play. Back in December, I had picked up a four pack of tiny dreydlekh at CVS as distraction for the girls, so we broke them out and they took a few practice spins before having to brush their teeth and get ready for camp.

Fast forward to tonight. It's rainy and the girls are a little stir-crazy. I get home and Celeste and Quinn want to play dreidel. The three of us get some pennies and go through a few spins. At first there are a few נ and a ש or two, then Celeste and I both spin a few ג in a row. Quinn, who's mostly ended up with נ or ש is starting to get frustrated and then she shouts: "I gotta get a gimel!" Two spins later she did ... and then started getting bored ...

Keeping Secrets

Every night, Quinn has one bedtime request: "Daddy, don't tell Mumma that you read to me." (If Evelin does the reading, the request is the same, "Don't tell Daddy that you read to me.") A little bit later, usually when the didn't-do-the-reading-tonight parent goes into her room to remind her that she's supposed to be falling asleep, she announces: "Uhm, Mumma/Daddy? Daddy/Mumma didn't read to me tonight. Can you read me three stories?"

Usually she's tried to play cute and convince us that no reading has occurred. "No, really, he/she didn't." And she gets a little upset, or sometimes giggly, when we remind her that we know the other parent has already read to her.

Tonight, when I told her that I knew Mumma had already read to her because she had told me, Quinn, dropped to her bed and sobbed: "Why do you guys always talk about that!"

Gender-Specific Magazine Blurbs

Celeste: "Daddy? What does 'sexy' mean?"

Me: "Uhm, it's kind of the same as attractive."

Celeste: "Daddy? What does 'gut' mean?"

Me: (Starting to look around at the magazines in the check-out lane to figure out where this is coming from) "Uhm, it's the same as a tummy."

Celeste: "Why do women have tummies and men have guts?"

Me: "What?"

Celeste: "Men's Health says 'Loose Your Gut', but Women's Health 'Sexy Tummy Today'. Why do men want to loose their tummies?"

We're Going to Need Bail Money

After dinner last night, Quinn runs excitedly into the kitchen where Evelin and I were cleaning up and Celeste was putting away her dinner dishes:

Q: "Celeste! Celeste! Celeste! Do you want to do something fun? So fun? We could go to jail!"

C: "Okay!"

And they both run out of the room.

Were I in Advertisting ...

... I think I'd use this as part of a print ad for Rhode Island Red's ...

A Really Good Book ... Apparently

I have to wake Celeste up each school morning at 6:30 a.m., so we do try to get her to bed at a decent hour. Usually, she’s in bed during the 7:00 p.m. hour and will read for a little while. Usually she’s asleep by a little past 8:00 p.m., but some times she stays up later.

Tonight, at about 8:45 p.m. Evelin thought she’d heard a noise from Celeste’s room, so I went up to check on her. I figured she’d be out cold, and I planned to make some comments to try to get Evelin to think that Celeste was still up.

Joke’s on me. At almost 9:00 p.m., Celeste was totally engrossed in The Ordinary Princess. I leaned over her to tell her it was time to go to sleep, and she didn’t respond at all ... although I could see her eyes flitting across the page. It took a few more times of me reminding her it was time to go to sleep before she finally spoke.

“I’m going to finish this book.”

I told her that if she woke up early, she could read in the morning, but she really wanted to finish tonight.

I told her she had 10 minutes then I would come back and turn out the light. Flash forward to a little past 9:00 p.m., I go upstairs and she has turned out her light and put the book down. Turns out she didn’t finish the book (which is good; she would’ve had to skim 50 pages or so, and she needs to work on slowing down and boosting comprehension), but she’s planning to finish it tomorrow ... either in the morning or afternoon or bedtime.

I asked her if it was a good book. “It’s turning out to be very good,” she said.

I told her she could bring the book to school for DEAR — drop everything and read — Time ... and that’s what she’s planning to do.