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.

Easter Wisdom

Quinn (as she's working through a pile of jellybeans): "My stomach feels like ill, but I'm not ill."

It Must Be the Hair ...

I've found, upon occasion, when the girls are getting crazy in the car, the radio applied at sufficiently loud volume tends to smooth things over — especially 105.9 The Edge or Jack-FM.

This morning, on the way to Quinn's school, one of the stations was playing Tom Petty's "You Got Lucky". Quinn asked who the singer was, I said "Tom Petty."

Celeste started riffing on his name: "Tom Puppy," "Tom Perry," "Tom Reddy," ...

Quinn then piped up, "Oh, I thought it was Jesus."

I asked why she thought that, and she replied, "Because he's singing with a strong voice."

Celeste then starting talking about "Tom Spaghetti."

The Hidden Dangers of Folding Laundry

And, once again, I'm kicking myself for not having a video camera on these kids 24/7 so that at least some college funding could be secured from America's Funniest Home Videos.



Yes. Despite the smile, that is an icepack on Quinlan's forehead. But that's getting a few minutes ahead of the story.

Celeste and Quinn were running around, avoiding cleaning things up, while Evelin put together their dinners (the girls were getting a different meal than us because the borinqueño dish I was making was started way too late to be part of their dinner). While things were cooking, I was folding some laundry. As I started folding a sheet, Quinn ran by and through it, like a bull chasing a matador's capote.

Of course, this was great fun and Quinn made several more passes before Celeste realized the fun and started running through, too. All was going well until the girls ended up on opposite sides of the sheet/capote ... and tried to run though it simultaneously ... conking heads quite spectacularly. I did my best to stifle a laugh as I consoled my two sobbing girls (I know, father of the year) with growing knots on their foreheads.

Celeste Discovers Celeste

Celeste and I were making groceries on Saturday. She was being pretty good, despite testing her "If you say 'please' enough then grown-ups will give you what you want" theory a few times, when she started looking in the (not ice cream) freezer cases and saw a bunch of boxes of ... Celeste Pizza-for-One. There was much clapping, dancing and a really big smile ...

Parenting is Hard: Three-and-a-Half Scenes

I'm sure these aren't the worst things we'll have to deal with over the years, but sometimes it's a fine line between laughing hysterically and how do I handle this.

Scene I

Quinlan is in the bath. I am downstairs and hear:

"Snow White! Snow White! C'm on! Go get your gun!"

Talking with her afterwards, Quin explained that it was Cinderella who wanted Snow White to get the gun. I don't know if that makes it better or worse ... although it sounds like Disney has an as-of-yet underexploited Princesses niche on their hands.

Scene II

Celeste in her kindergarten classroom. The teacher is at the whiteboard writing out some sentances for the kids. Celeste starts yelling out:

"Boring!"

Appropriately, she was sent to the princapal's office ... where she was allowed to sit and read quietly for a while ... which is what she wanted to be doing in the first place. I'm not sure the right lesson was learned there.

Scene III

Celeste and Quinn are discussing Celeste's newly proclaimed vegetarianism, as Quinn extols the virtues of eating meat.

C: "Well, Quinn, I just don't want to hurt animals"

Q: "But you don't hurt them. They're already dead!"

And with one vegetarian parent and one not-vegetarian parent, it just makes this whole dinnertime craziness even more fun ...

Scene III½

A little later Quinn was asking about what other sorts of animals are eaten by people. She already knew chickens and turkeys (although she's not convinced those are different), pigs, cows, fish ...

Q: Do people eat bunnies?

E: Yes, some people do eat rabbit.

Q: Slightly worried look on her face.

E: But we won't ever make you eat rabbit, Quinn.

Q: But I want to!

I need to check with her nursery school to see if they had a guest apperance by Anthony Bourdain or something ...

What to Do in a Blizzard ...

We knew it was going to be a snowy day today, but the predicted snow totals kept increasing over the course of the day yesterday. This morning, we woke to a nice 5" or so, with more coming down, and, according to Weather.com ... a blizzard warning.

Fortunately for us, Celeste is a huge fan of the Little House on the Prairie series and was able to tell us exactly what we should do when there's a blizzard: "Wrap up in blankets and read the Bible."

Instead, I've made a pot of red beans, Evelin's made some bread, and we've mounted an expedition across town to a 5-year-old's birthday party where there was much craziness followed by a long trod back home through the snow. (It was also the first time I've gotten to use my snowshoes since the 2003 President's Day snowstorm when I struggled my way to the zoo only to find out that behavior watches don't go on when the zoo is closed and the city snowed under ...)