Summer! We've had a couple of brutal heatwaves, a charmingly tiny canine houseguest who adores Skipper, some ultimate frisbee, and a trip to Seattle to see family and watch baseball. We finally get to moved back into our house (after exactly the kind of exhausting, overbudget, much-drawn-out renovation project that makes people tell you never to do a renovation).

Duchess had an early-summer trip to Sweden that she enjoyed enormously- it's hard not to be won over by Sweden at midsummer, and Duchess got three weeks of endless daylight, wild strawberries, swimming, weird lawn games, and excellent public transportation. Plus a million mosquito bites, but you can't win everything.

We took a road trip to eastern Oregon! We started off with a minor league baseball game in Washington.

Then we went south to Wallowa Lake to camp for a couple of nights, just as severe thunderstorms settled in the area.

We stopped to pay our respects to the confluence of the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Cook loves a confluence.

We also stopped for Dutch Bros, a great Oregon cultural tradition that Cook does not find appealing, being a black-coffee-acquired-cheaply-and-on-foot guy, so he insisted that we park and walk up to the window instead of driving through. 

Wallowa Lake is beautiful when it isn't pouring rain. 

Our activities were curtailed by the intermittent lightning and downpours, and by Duchess's stress fracture (preventing her from walking far), so we visited downtown Joseph and downtown Enterprise.

Cook and the girls bravely swam in the lake. I'm given to understand it was quite cold. 

We splurged and took a tram up to the top of a mountain. Duchess was not a fan of the tram, but Skipper really was.

We drove to Baker City, stopping in Lostine for coffee along the way, and then Lagrande to visit another bookstore.

Took a day in Baker City, visited the Oregon Trail wagonruts.

We drove to Bend, stopping for pie, ghost towns, and a very large wagon replica.

In Bend, we visited relatives and the Deschutes River. 

And then we came home! Eastern Oregon is really, really beautiful, and we were also so glad to return home!

Summer winds down.

Hello from steamy Portland! We've been in an oppressive streak of hot days, which combined with a few days of terrible air quality to make a miserable end-of-last-week. But we survived. We try not to move very much. Skipper has been sleeping in the basement because the upper bunk in a west-facing bedroom is unbearable at her bedtime.*

Updates: 

1) We had our third weekend in a row of camping, and it was a lot of fun. The camera ran out of batteries, so I have no photographs. But it was fun. There were a LOT of my relatives, and dogs, and an adorable toddler, and there was river floating and swimming. The kids were thrilled. Duchess paddled an inflatable kayak by herself, and she loved that - she was afraid at first, and then super-pleased with herself for not falling out in one of the little rapids. Skipper got to ride in a canoe, and also was afraid at first and then delighted by the experience. And now we're home for a weekend, scrambling to catch up with all the stuff that went undone for nearly a month.

2) Duchess is gone, off in Minnesota competing in an ultimate frisbee tournament, under the quasi-supervision of some young volunteer coaches (thank you, volunteer coaches).** After the tournament, she's going straight off for a few days at a lake house with a teammate and the teammate's relatives. She'll be gone for a week total, and doing stuff that requires her to take more responsibility than she ever has before for both logistics and her own emotional and physical well-being. She seems to be having a great time so far, as far as we can glean from her cursory, infrequent communications.*** Cook and I fully expect she will return home completely converted to ultimate frisbee. Duchess was born to be part of a team,**** and ultimate has some fundamental characteristics that really appeal to her, plus she loves the people. One of her communications was pretty much a lot of squee over a player she thinks is AMAZING! 

3) Skipper has been muddling through all her activities in a storm of anger, fear, and resentfulness.  She's been struggling with swimming - she has missed so many practices due to vacations and camp that she hasn't ever really settled into it, and she still feels very uncomfortable. She has also continued to struggle with ultimate - she enjoys it but feels really uncomfortable because she's so bad at it. She went to her first ballet class today very anxious, and came through it okay. She's talking and thinking a lot now about her habitual thought patterns, though, which is potentially a very good development. (Actually, having Duchess gone is giving her a time and space to do a lot of interesting processing. Last night she asked me where love is stored in the heart - if there's like a big reservoir or what.)

That's pretty much it. We're turning the corner toward school now, and I think both kids are looking forward to settling back into it...

* I have also learned this week that Skipper is extremely embarrassed by the way I look in a tank top. I've been trying to explain to her that body-shaming is not okay, and also I'm HOT and I'm going to let my blotchy upper arms fly.

** To clarify, Duchess is now playing ultimate frisbee at an elite level not because she's good (she's mediocre, though being tall is helpful), but because teen girls who play ultimate even mediocrely are scarce in Portland, and an even smaller number of them have families who can be suckered into buying their kid a plane ticket to Minnesota.

***Either she's having a great time or she's joined a cult. I guess we'll find out when we go to pick her up at the airport.

**** Left alone, she's pretty much an inert lump. Put her in a team environment, and she instantly kindles into life and becomes an energetic, responsive, thoughtful, engaged participant. Take away the team, and you have a lump again. It's an amazing social alchemy. 

New skills

 Our end-of-summer vacation trip was delightful. The highlight of the trip was a 2-night camp-out at a mountain lake in Central Oregon. It was beautiful, and of course I took no photos of the scenery. What I do have is photos of the chilly morning.

And of the canoeing and kayaking. We got to our campsite by water, which was exciting. The next day, we all did some boating. Duchess and Cook both tried out the single-seater whitewater canoe (Duchess had her teacher on-board), and Cook took Skipper for a ride in the kayak.

I really didn't take anywhere near as many photos as this outing deserved. The lake was beautiful, the weather was perfect, the novelty of boating and camping was terrific fun, the food was delicious, our hosts were wonderful, and it was just an all-around rip-roaring success. Skipper was impressively resilient about all the challenges and transitions, and kept repeating jauntily "This is so fun!" until we began to wonder if maybe she had experienced some kind of personality reversal during the drive out. Duchess had a few of what Cook calls "whinesplosions" but also had a fabulous time. The usual camping challenges (cold, dirt, uncomfortable sleeping quarters, lack of a bathroom,  etc.) spiced everything up. The girls both mastered the art of peeing on the ground (without peeing on your pants, your shoes, or the person assisting you), and we learned the hard way that Duchess's sleeping bag isn't really warm enough for camping.* It was perfect.

And now it's time to get back to real life. We have one last relatively unscheduled week before school/preschool starts next week, and we plan to eat a lot of tomatoes and ice cream. Duchess found out that she was assigned the teacher she wanted* but that most of her favorite kids are in the other teacher's class. That's the news!

*Last year she got the teacher she was afraid of, and quickly came around to adoring her.

Water cactus!

We're back. We had a great vacation. We're happy to be home.

The kids turned out to be pretty decent travelers,* even on the day when we got up at 4 AM, flew all day, and then drove for three hours. However, (of course) Skipper required near-continual attention, and wailed/moaned "I want to go hoooooome!" at least ten times a day. Dutch had a wonderful, wonderful time, and beamed with happiness almost the entire week.

This is what we did:
1) Drive around.
2) Spend time with lots of relatives.
3) Pick apples.
4) Go swimming and canoeing at a lake. (On one of the two 80-plus degrees days we experienced in New Hampshire. That was weird.)
5) Drink lots of coffee (or juice, in the case of the non-caffeine-dependent members of the family)
6) Play croquet.
7) Go for walks in the woods.
8) Sit around an outdoor fire at night.
9) See wildlife.**
10) Play legos and blocks and boardgames with tolerant grandparents.
11) Not wash dishes.
12) Collect a bunch of Cook's old soccer and basketball jerseys for Dutch to wear - she loves them, and has been pairing them with a headband worn over her hair, so she looks like she just happened to wander in from the early 1980s and put on a skort.
13) See one of my fabulous cousins get married.

It was a really nice trip. We didn't really have enough time, and there are many friends I wanted to see but couldn't get to, but we got a lot out of the time we had.

Here are some videos of our unexpectedly summery stay in New Hampshire:

We didn't really come prepared for the weather. Cook only brought one pair of shoes, appropriate for the wedding.

Skipper took one look at the lake, and immediately wanted to go in.

Half the party piled into a canoe. This song (related to Skipper's potty adventures) has been stuck in my head all week.

Dutch told her granddad that she knew how to do a cannonball.

And this is Skipper's recap of our New Hampshire adventures at 6 AM on the day we left.

That's all the record I have - we didn't bring the camera, so all you get is one afternoon's worth of videos.

In unrelated news, Skipper just ran through the room, stark naked, shrieking "One! Two! Six! Cow!"



*The most positive development was that Skipper was not afraid of the airplane. She liked it, actually, and hollered with excitement at key moments. When the second plane was taking off, she yelled "Flap! Flap! Flap! Flap!" as if the plane was a sluggish bird.
** We are urban people. Our wildlife consisted of some chipmunks, woodpeckers, assorted other birds, a porcupine, and a toad.

We had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend. We went to Bend, as is now traditional, and the weather was gorgeous, the company excellent, and the food delicious.

The kids loved it. They loved being outside, they loved all the time with their beloved relatives, they loved doing stuff outside our usual lives. Skipper was assigned chores that she found extremely interesting.

Dutch participated again in the peculiar Pet Parade. Skipper wasn't very enthusiastic (and this picture suggests that Cook at least momentarily shared her feelings).

The Best Baby Ever apparently was also a little skeptical.

After the parade, Dutch got a popsicle (handed out to all the nine million kids who participated), and Skipper was very jealous. Dutch was completely exhausted, and when her popsicle fell apart a few minutes after this photo was taken, she burst into sobs and wails.

We also went rafting, swimming, and museuming, and Dutch enjoyed everything enormously in spite of her sleep deficit. The rest of us did, too, but only Dutch was overwhelmed with delight by standing in a cabin listening to "Mrs. Miller" explain to her about how underclothes worked in 1904. Dutch (who dressed up in her most old-fashioned clothes for the museum visit) would now like to buy some petticoats and corsets.

It was a lovely break. We returned (after a drive that was notably better than our two previous end-of-Fourth-of-July drives home with the kids, but still approached the world record for the amount of whining perpetrated in one four-hour period) to find our garden bursting with bounty (and aphids, damnit!), and our bedroom mysteriously STILL not painted. What's up with that?

Last call for advent calendar!

If you've got a small thing to send Dutch/Skipper, pop it in the mail! Thanks for the things we've amassed so far! Don't worry about choking hazards - Skipper's pretty good about not eating things.*

Today Dutch acted in a scene in a (student) film! She was very excited. Also, this weekend Taekwondo Uncle notched another degree in his black belt, and we got to watch.** Dutch loved that, too - she got to spend time with some of her favorite grownups, watch TU break bricks and kick people in the head, and admire The Best Baby Ever, who continues to live up to her reputation. And Skipper started peeing in the potty again! It was a great weekend.

It's supposed to snow tonight! I'm preparing for city-wide paralysis.

*Unfortunately, that goes for food as well as inedible things. I'm not sure she's ever intentionally ingested a vegetable.

** My uncle can totally kick your uncle's ass.

Photo evidence

Dutch had a wonderful time on her camping trip last week. She was a little apprehensive beforehand, what with her fear of homesickness and wolves, but it sounds like it was all good. Except the part where she fell down and bruised her butt on a rock. That part was bad.

I love this picture. It looks like she's determinedly paddling away in her Barbie life jacket, heading for the distant hills.

We moved.

It was crappy, despite enormous help from the Big Cooks.* We're all exhausted and pretty frayed around the edges. Poor Skipper is not happy, and now when she sees us move anything larger than herself - box, bag, furniture, whatever - she starts screaming. You can almost hear her brain: "Noooo!!!! Don't change ANYTHING ELSE!!!!! No more change!" I kind of agree.

Things are starting to stabilize. We spent an exorbitant amount of money on a new bed (we've been sleeping on our sad old full-sized futon for 10 months), which will be delivered today. I'm pretty sure that's going to change my life.

Dutch had a terrific two-day camping trip (overlapping with the move) last week with my uncle and aunt. She feels very grown-up, and she had a great time - I'll post some pictures later.








*Who booked tickets for a fun short visit to Portland before we scheduled our move to fall exactly during their stay. They may never visit again.

Happy Fourth of July! I didn't get any good pictures, but here are a few not-so-good ones.

Hoods

I had my hooding ceremony yesterday.*



















Dutch attended, dressed as a cat. (I'm holding her tail in this picture.) Also, Cook was there, and my lovely aunt, uncle, cousin, and fetal first cousin once removed (or whatever), all of whom trekked in from various remote Oregon locations for the occasion. Skipper stayed at daycare, because we were pretty sure that she and the ceremony would both be better off without eachother.

Anyway, I'm officially done. I'm pretty happy about that, but also feeling a little adrift, and a lot tired. Last night, I went to bed at 9. Today, I have no homework.

Here's a conversation I had with Dutch last night.

Me: Honey, could you please stop talking for three minutes? I have a really bad headache, and I need a break.
Dutch: You have a really bad headache?
M: Yes.
D: It's really bad?
M: Yes.
(Pause while Dutch thinks this over and I suffer.)
D: How do you KNOW it's a really bad headache?
M: I can't believe you just asked me that. Now I have to beat you to death with a hammer and bury you in the back yard.**

I think the world of science is just waiting for this kid to grow up - relentless, skeptical, curious, RELENTLESS.

*Thankfully, only a few people actually got hooded (you have to get a PhD for that sort of individual service), so we were able to move through the ceremony fairly briskly.
**I didn't really say that. Not exactly.

Bribe me.

An incentive chart is a poster on which Dutch gets to put a sticker at the end of each day that she keeps her glasses on all day, working toward prizes. If she earns a sticker each of the next four days, for example, she gets to have breakfast with me on Sunday, JUST THE TWO OF US,* at our awesome local cafe, where Dutch will eat bacon, jam, ketchup,** bread, and freshly-squeezed orange juice.

I wish I had an incentive chart. Adulthood is kind of shitty that way. My rewards are erratic, usually unearned, and often entwined with something less lovely, but they are lovely. The sight of Dutch's small, defiant face turned up to me today as we discussed her incentives, with her jutting chin, tangled hair, and lopsidedly magnified right eye peering through those despised glasses, was a reward. When she said that thinking about the bacon "makes my mouth water!" and then said thoughtfully "... I don't actually know what that means," that was a reward, too.

But I'd still like some stickers. And a prize.


*This is a very powerful incentive, because she's so sick of that damn interloping baby.
** That is a very specific list - the ketchup and jam are made in-house, and are delicious, so they have become a central part of the meal, rather than peripheral.

Girls Who Wear Glasses

I have a five-year-old. I have an amblyopic five-year-old. I have an amblyopic five-year-old princess who LOVED her birthday presents (thank you, all of you!) and is wildly excited to play her new games, read her new books, wear her new clothes, and dress up her new Shirley Temple paper dolls (courtesy of our housemates, who have had to watch all that tap-dancing). The kid loves Shirley Temple.* The kid does NOT love the prospect of getting glasses.** I cannot find any evidence that Shirley Temple wore glasses, but I'm looking for evidence to prove that people CAN be fancy and wear glasses at the same time. I welcome any suggestions for getting over this hurdle.

* The irrepressibly jaunty little-girl Shirley Temple, not the scary Republican old lady Shirley Temple
**Because she actually only needs a corrective lens on one eye, Cook thinks we should get her a monocle.

knowing that my toes are sparkly is all that's keeping my spirits up right now.

I'm supposed to be doing a statistical analysis of some kind right now. I'm not doing it, obviously. I don't even know HOW to do it, so I have to figure that out, as a first step. And I'm supposed to write a 20-page paper about it, by Monday afternoon. I feel a little like I'm in a play about a person doing statistical analysis, but not only do I not only actually know nothing about statistical analysis, I've also forgotten all my lines.

I have the kind of brain that is really easy to stuff full of information temporarily - I can speed-read and cram for tests like nobody's business - but everything trickles right back out again, and very little actually gets put away for long-term storage. I've taken several classes in statistics, and done pretty well in them. But I can't even remember how to get my data into SPSS. The internets will help me, and my crappy statistics textbook from last year, but it sure would be nice if I could access anything I've learned about statistics in my life.

In other news, I got a pedicure this week, thanks to one of my kind aunties, and I stunned the pedicurist (pedicurer?) by telling her that I had never had a pedicure AND I had never worn toenail polish before. I picked out red sparkly polish, in honor of my girly-girl daughter (who LOVES my pedicure, and desperately wants one of her own now, phthalates be damned), and my feet now look vaguely transvestite-y - puffy and white and hairy, with stubby red sparkly nails. Cook took one look, snapped into Cranky Old Man mode and started muttering something involving the word "garish." (This cracked me up - I waited in vain for him to start talking about fast ladies painting their faces.) However, I really loved the pedicure, and as I sat there reading People magazine, getting be-sparkled, I wondered blissfully why on earth I don't get a pedicure every week.

Anyway, I'm so busy right now that I really shouldn't be blogging at all - I'll write more after I hand in my Truly Terrible Paper on Monday!

the sweetness

We got two lavish Valentine's Day packages today, from some of our loves. Dutch was in paroxysms of delight, saying "Oh! My goodness! I've wanted this MY WHOLE LIFE!!!!" over every other item. Her most treasured goodies are a candy necklace* and a fuzzy hooded sweatshirt with hearts on it.
Early Happy Valentine's Day to all of you. May the universe shower you with whatever your equivalent of a candy necklace may be.


* I think these are totally disgusting, but Dutch has apparently desperately wanted one ever since some moment in the recentish past when Jasmine brought one to daycare and made everybody horribly jealous.

Home

Phew. We're home, after a whirlwind trip to Vermont to see Antarctic Uncle and Green Thumb Girl get married. We were gone for just about 60 hours, and according to my rough calculations, this is how that time broke down:

• 34 in transit (bus, train, plane, taxi, and car, visiting the cities of Chicago, Las Vegas, Manchester, and Montpelier)
• 11 sleeping (more for Dutch, who got a few desperately-needed ad hoc naps here and there)
• 8 at the wedding

I guess we must have spent the remaining 7 hours showering, brushing teeth, eating some meals, using the bathroom, trying to convince Dutch to go to sleep, and lying awake wishing for sleep ourselves. I can't remember. I do know that there was scarcely a moment of down time. (Flying across country with a 3-year-old and a pile of homework reading does NOT count as down time.) By Saturday afternoon I was exhausted, and by Sunday afternoon I was in an altered state. By the time we got home, Cook and I were in that hideous stage of fatigue where you can't finish a sentence, you trip over things, you can't remember why you're in the room you're in, and you mistakenly brush your teeth with your wife's toothbrush, an act which seems to your sleep-deprived wife like malicious cruelty and brings her to the verge of tears. Dutch, having napped through the entire landing, de-planing*, and baggage-claiming, was actually relatively peppy at that point. (She had some seriously bratty moments over the weekend, but generally behaved herself extremely well under the circumstances. During layovers, we drilled her to do jumping jacks and high kicks and sprints in the gate areas.)

Our ballots arrived! We were so excited we actually considered filling them out on the spot, and then wisely decided we couldn't be trusted to make responsible decisions. I might have woken in the morning to find I'd voted for the Libertarians or for some evil ballot measure that would leave me sick at heart.

This kind of experience highlights something that I consider to be one of the best and worst aspects of parenting. When you feel truly awful and sorry for yourself, you still have to behave responsibly and take care of your kid. Sometimes this feels downright heroic, like when you're carrying your sleeping child through the airport at the end of an 18-hour day, staggering with exhaustion, juggling luggage, and hurrying to catch the train. It certainly adds an element of extra stress to already-stressful situations, though.

We're glad that we went, though. It was fun to meet Green Thumb Aunt's family, and it was wonderful to see Antarctic Uncle and Green Thumb Aunt both looking so gorgeous and happy. Also, Dutch got to be a flower girl, a job she took extremely seriously, and she also got to ride a horse. She was thrilled.

Anyway, we're back. I decided I was too tired to go to work today, and Dutch is too sick to go to daycare anyway, so she and I are at home together mopping up all the household tasks that didn't get done this weekend. Cook got up at 6 to go to work, because he is stronger or more foolish than I am. Today I feel just Really Tired, but no longer in an altered state. After I unpack, do the laundry, and buy groceries, I think I might vote!


* I love that word.

What I learned this weekend...

I spent the weekend in central Oregon, in the company of some lovely extended family, to celebrate the high-school graduation of my youngest cousin, The Napper.

Another cousin, Philosophy Boy, spent some time (late night, fueled by bourbon) dementedly raving about his hatred of "the umlauts in the New Yorker" which initially mystified me and Cook. But a quick visit with the internet revealed that the umlauts are in fact diareses. Yes, diareses. And further pursuit of the diaresis question uncovered a great webpage that seems to have been neglected for years, which is a tragedy.

I'm procrastinating. I appear to be completely burned out for the year, to the extent that I just can't be bothered to finish a paper that's due tomorrow. Or take a shower or do the other things I should do before going to work at 6:30 tomorrow morning. It just doesn't seem all that important, somehow. Unlike diareses. Now, those are important.

Anyway, thanks, family, for the weekend! Nice to meet you, RA! Thanks for taking care of us, Taekwando-Waterfall Uncle and Chipmunk-Nemesis Aunty! And, last and most important, congratulations, Napper! Excellent work in nailing down high school, and good luck with that whole rest-of-your-life thing!

What a family is.

"It never takes longer than a few minutes, whenever they get together, for everyone to revert to the state of nature, like a party marooned by a shipwreck. That's what a family is. Also the storm at sea, the ship, and the unknown shore. And the hats and the whiskey stills that you make out of bamboo and coconuts. And the fire that you light to keep away the beasts."

from The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon

If you need nursing in Alameda County...

A friend of mine just got her official nursing license, after an intense two years of juggling school, clinic, a husband who was also in school and working, a social life, and a kid. She's smart and lovely and resourceful, and she worked crazy hard for this, and I am amazed by her! Congratulations, Trapeze Girl!

Aunties

I have some wonderful aunts. The two aunts, V and C, that I have particularly in mind (the rest of them are nice, too, but they live really far away and I hardly know them) are related to me by marriage, not blood, but they've been a big part of my life, and now a big part of Dutch's life. They recommended books to me, complimented me, gave me advice, listened to me, laughed at my jokes, made me laugh, told me the truth, told me the good parts of the truth, gossiped with me, and generally made my life richer.

Adults, related or not, who are not part of the nuclear family, are really important in a kid's life. They act as role models and teachers in a way that parents are too close to do. Kids can't really hear what their parents are saying much of the time, particularly in the throes of adolescence. Having adults who cared about me and were interested in me was really important to me, and had a much bigger influence than those adults probably ever guessed.

I've joked about how I'd like to send Dutch off to Summer Bootcamp every year, to stay with various friends and family members, so she can learn lots of things we can't teach her. (How to put on makeup, how to be assertive, how to make a decent pie crust, how to play drums, how to build a composting toilet, how to speak Latin, how to play basketball, etc.) Actually, I've pretended to be joking about it, but I'm really pretty serious. I want my friends and family to be involved with her, and I want her to get that guidance into a larger world than Cook and I can provide. I want her to have aunties (auntie in the sense of an honored adult in a child's life).

Anyway, I'd like to call for a moment of appreciation for all the aunties, who give their time and attention and energy and love to one kid or another, even though they don't have to. And an extra moment of appreciation for MY two aunts, who still crack me up and amaze me with their generosity. Every one of their kindnesses to the bratty young me was received (secretly, under the veneer of sullenness) with gratitude, and cherished.