Feed on
Posts
Comments

Christmas: A Photo Essay

Dec 26th, 2009 by

On Christmas Eve there was dinner at our house, and then presents.

Excited on Christmas Eve

Excited on Christmas Eve

Simon was an excited and happy little boy.

On Christmas Day, there was a party at Grandma and Pappaw’s house.

Music Time with Grandma

Music Time with Grandma

Simon was subdued, but still socialized and had a great time, especially with musical toys. He was a quiet and happy boy.

And on Boxing Day, there was this:

Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty

A little boy, pooped from all the parties and excitement, who fell asleep on the couch listening to music on his new MP3 player.

Posted in Jessica, Little Boy | No Comments »

Three Year Check-Up

Dec 25th, 2009 by

Simon went to the doctor on Wednesday, and it was a strange, strange visit. Strange because he was reduced to near hysteria when being measured and weighed, which should be no big deal, and strange because he was absolutely fine with Dr. Newstadt’s exam, which used to be a very big deal. The only thing I can think is that we prepared him for Dr. Newstadt very well and then forgot to mention the bit with the nurse first. Maybe he thought we were pulling a bait and switch? I don’t know .

Anyway, stats for my 3-year(and two month)-old are:

  • Height: 38 1/2 maybe. He was wriggly. 65th percentile, down from 75th
  • Weight: 31 pounds. 45th percentile, up a bit from 40th
  • Speech: “beautiful” (Yay!)
  • Hemoglobin: Normal (Yay! He tested slightly anaemic last year.)
  • BMI: 14.7. In super-model realm at the 12th percentile, but certainly fatter than he used to be. THANK GOODNESS. If he keeps this up, he may be able to hold his pants up.

More on funny things said, a play-date, and Christmas to follow. Have a great holiday everyone.

Posted in Jessica, Little Boy | No Comments »

Smoky Mountain Misery

Dec 22nd, 2009 by

Matt and I left for a holiday in the Smoky Mountains on Thursday, arriving at our chalet at dinner-time. The first thing I did was pinch my finger in a corner cabinet, creating an immediate and painful blood blister.

No big deal, I thought,

Then we realized our phone didn’t work in the house, and that we had no cell reception, either.

Not great, but no big deal, I thought. We’re still on vacation. Look how cute Matt and Simon look. We’ll still have fun.

Couch Buddies

Couch Buddies

Then the weather forecast changed from 40s and rain to 30s and snow. Snow was supposed to arrive on our mountain at around 7 p.m. Friday and end at around 7 p.m. Saturday. Since we were at the top of a mountain without four-wheel drive, this meant we were going to be able to go out briefly on Friday, then head up to our house for Simon’s nap, during which time Matt would do one more grocery run. After that, we’d have to go into hibernation mode until Sunday mid-day or so.

Not what we had planned, but doable. Still a vacation.

So we duly went to the Aquarium of the Smokies, took in some amazing sea life, and headed back up our mountain. It started to snow at 2, when we left the aquarium. The big wet flakes changed to small dry ones as we headed up Ski Mountain Rd.

And the road got more slippery.

And we watched a big truck get stuck in front of us.

And we saw another car on its side that had totally run off the road.

And then we ourselves got stuck about four-fifths of the way up the mountain.

Big deal.

At this point, Matt stayed behind with our stuck car to await assistance, which arrived shortly and helped him to push the car off the road.

I grabbed Simon and his back-pack and started to carry them up the road in the snow. Ten minutes or so into my walk, a family in a truck offered me a ride. I tried to decide whether walking on a narrow road with Simon was more or less dangerous than hitching a ride with strangers without a car-seat and, God help me, chose the ride.

These kind folks took South Baden Drive, our street, to Arbon Drive, their street, to drop off stranded neighbors, whereupon they got stuck in their driveway and could not get back to the road. The man of the house, Kenny, then insisted that he walk with me back to South Baden and further on up the mountain to our house.

By this point, it was getting colder, Simon’s hands were turning bright red (his mittens were back at the house), my visibility from snow and glasses was getting quite bad, and Simon was shrieking from cold and fear and would not let Kenny carry him no matter how my arms or back ached from all the carrying I had already done in the parking garage (which scared him), up the stairs to the aquarium (we were running late), and through the aquarium at various points when Simon kept going in circles and I was trying to get us headed in a particular direction.

We ended up over-shooting our street, then doubling back and finally reaching our little mountain house. A little snuggling and Caillou went a long way towards fixing things, and Simon gave Matt a pretty accurate accounting of events when he arrived at the house about 10 minutes after we did.

“We were in the car, and I cried. And Mommy carry me in the snow. And the man tried to carry me. And I was cold, and I got scared, and I cried. And then we made it home.”

While Simon napped off the stress, Matt and I went into planning mode. Should we wait out the storm? Try to walk down with bare essentials in the morning? We had just about talked ourselves into staying when the lights went out during dinner, scaring the bejeezus out of Simon. The house had neither candles nor flashlights, our car was a half mile down the road, and our tepid fire wasn’t going to go far towards keeping us warm. Suddenly, we stopped thinking in terms of “vacation saving” and started thinking in terms of “disaster planning.”

The View from our Window

The View from our Window

The lights came on an hour later, and by Saturday morning, the forecast was for more snow.  I went out on a morning reconnaissance mission and was pleased to see that South Baden was plowed. Our court wasn’t, but we could walk supplies to the car if Matt could dislodge it and get it back on the main road. If he couldn’t, we were going to have to wait everything out, as a careful reading of our maps showed that a walk into town was going to be long, miserable, and dangerous. Snow was expected to resume mid-day. I began to look at our food supply and mentally ration how much Matt and I could have each day so Simon could eat his regular amounts at regular intervals.

We finally got a lucky break when Matt was able to roll his car back onto the road and make it to our court. As quickly as we could, we packed up our toys, our kitchen, and all our clothes, and headed into town to a rather corporate hotel. Our A plan was to spend two nights here, enjoy downtown Gatlinburg, and salvage the trip.

Thing is, our hotel suite was small and soulless. It featured generic checked carpeting, an electric fireplace on a timed dial, and a sleeper sofa that’s pretty uncomfortable before you even unfold it. After you unfold it, it’s unspeakable. And town itself? More relentlessly tacky than I remembered. Our “street view” featured not pretty Christmas lights, but rather a red glowing Texas Roadhouse sign; the Christmas lights in town weren’t that impressive; and a little shop across the street allows you to take an old-timey picture of your small child dressed as an outlaw holding a Jack Daniels bottle.

There was no salvaging this trip. So we finally cut our losses and came home Sunday. I was hoping we’d have a nice little break away from home, but it turned out being home was the best break of all.  Maybe next year….

Posted in Family, Jessica, Little Boy | 1 Comment »

Quick Follow-Up

Dec 22nd, 2009 by

I have a long, gory story to tell about our vacation in Gatlinburg. I’ve titled it “Smokey Mountain Misery”, but Matt’s suggestion, “Escape from Ski Mountain” captures it equally well. I’ll give you a hint as to what went wrong: Freak winter storm.

But before we get there, a quick follow-up to the race talk is in order. One day after the big talk, which took place in our rented mountain house atop Ski Mountain in the Smokies, we found ourselves in a soulless corporate hotel in downtown Gatlinburg. Matt looked at the matching lamps that flanked the bed and said “Look Simon! We’ve got identical twin lamps in here.”

Simon smiled, and then said, [pointing to the first] “That lamp’s Jillian. [pointing to the second] And that lamp’s Anieya.”

So glad we cleared that up!

I have two questions now:

  1. When will this embarrass me in public?
  2. Will the objects under discussion be understanding and amused, like my friend Gabriel was, or am I going to have TWO problems to deal with?

Posted in Jessica, Little Boy, Simon says... | No Comments »

The Race Talk

Dec 18th, 2009 by

A few months ago I grabbed a Newsweek to read on a plane trip. I don’t normally read Newsweek, but the cover story, “Is Your Baby Racist?” got my attention. The gist of the story was that while no, your baby is probably not racist, that yes, your baby does indeed notice race. And if you want a non-racist child, you had better discuss it.

According to researchers, many well meaning white folks worry about race, put their kids in multi-racial schools or day-cares, and then never discuss race at all, hoping their kids will end up color blind. Except it doesn’t work that way, and you are likely to have a child who thinks race is a taboo subject. And when that happens, the child may think race is taboo because, somehow, some races are better or worse than others.

Non-Hispanic whites seem to have the most trouble here. Folks in other racial groups in America discuss race by necessity. And, the researchers argued, if parents would just discuss race the way they do gender—which most of us appear to do pretty matter-of-factly—we’d be much better off. As I read this article, I paused several times and filed the whole thing away under “stuff I’ll need to think about when Simon is four or five.”

Or three! Much to my surprise, it came up tonight. Matt and I were tucking Simon into bed when Matt made note of Dirty Dog and Dirty Dog’s Twin and asked Simon:

“Are there any twins in your class?”

He was thinking of Meredith and Griffen, fraternal twins in Simon’s class this year.

“Huuuuuum….” Simon thought for a while. “Anieya and Jillian.”

Whoa. Anieya and Jillian are two girls who look nothing alike. Except both of them are African-American, and they are the only two African-American girls in either of the Twos classes. Keneseth Israel, while not as homogenous as I had feared, is still majority white, with a good and growing number of Indians and a smattering of African-Americans, Asians, Central Americans, Persians, and Russian Jews (Russian speaking Jews, not just of Russian ancestry like me) added to the mix.  

So anyway, Simon announces that Anieya and Jillian are twins, and I was at once floored and panicked. It was time to have a talk, and it was not a talk for which I was prepared. So I gulped hard and dove in the best I could.

“Why do you think Anieya and Jillian are twins, Simon?” I asked.

“Because they are both dark” he answered.

“Oh, you mean they both have dark brown skin?”

“Yeah, they both have dark skin. They’re both black.”

Didn’t know he knew the word “black” in that context either!

“Well, Simon, they are both black. You are right. But they aren’t twins; they aren’t even related. They just happen to be two girls in your class who are both black. You know, Caroline has light hair and light eyes, and so does Sophia. But they aren’t related, either.

We come in all different shapes and colors. Some of us have light skin, like you and me and Daddy. And some people, like Alise’s mommy, have light skin and very dark hair and eyes that are shaped differently than ours. And other people, like Anieya and Jillian and Mr. Gabriel, have dark skin, dark hair, and dark eyes.

But underneath we’re all the same. We might look different, but underneath, in our hearts, we are all the same.”

Whew! And Oh-my-goodness I hope I got that right. Part of that little speech was instinct. Part was what I vaguely remembered being recommended in the Newsweek article. And part, I have to admit, was cribbed from my friend Gabriel, a Dinka from South Sudan, who said something vaguely similar when a little girl in a restaurant looked at him with shock and loudly declared, “Oh my God, Mommy, he’s SO BLACK.”

Still, it was nerve-wracking to feel so blind-sided. More, I feel stupid for being blind-sided. How could I expect a child cabable of differentiating among shades of a given color to not notice that two of the children in his class are much, much darker than he is?  This conversation was inevitable; I was just being too much the well-meaning, nervous, non-Hispanic white person to bring it up first.

Posted in Jessica, KIP (Preschool), Little Boy, Simon says... | 2 Comments »

The Agony of the Sleeves

Dec 16th, 2009 by

Now I’ve told the same joke twice. Lazy, I know. But how else to describe Simon’s annual freak-out over weather-related clothing changes? Every winter he pulls at long sleeves as though he were a fictional Elizabeth I wearing her poisoned dress, and every summer he yanks at short sleeves as though Mommy had a catastrophic laundry incident.

But the worst of it all is the hats. The first time we try to put one on his head he goes ballistic. When he was one, he cried and thrashed and would only wear a thin ski cap that did not match his coat. When he was two, he cried and thrashed some more, only used words like “no hat!”. And now, at three, he has run away from us, played possum to avoid us, and told us in no uncertain terms that he does not want to wear a hat.

I’ve decided to carefully pick my battles here. Over freezing and he’s free to be cold. Under freezing and he has to suit up. I handled his colic; I can handle this. Tonight though, a funny thing happened. It’s a long, long story, but at 7:38 we all found ourselves heading out to the coffee shop. I thought the temperature was above freezing, but it turns out I was off by a bit.

It was cold out. Sufficiently cold that when a hatless, mitten-less little boy hit our front porch, he hopped around like a jack-rabbit and declared:

“I can’t do this cold!”

At which point he dutifully went back inside our house and submitted to a hat and mittens with no protest at all. Next year I think I’ll skip the histrionics and just let cold-related shock do my job for me.

Posted in Jessica, Little Boy | 1 Comment »

Home for the Holidays

Dec 14th, 2009 by

One of the reasons I moved back home was to be near my family. After 17 years away, I was sick of literally phoning in my participation for every Rosh Hashanah, every Chanukah, every Thanksgiving, every Passover, and every birthday. And once my nieces and nephews came along, I was really sick of blindly (and probably often badly) shopping for kids I didn’t really know.

Now that I have racked up a decent number of years back, all of this has resolved itself. I don’t take these holidays for granted, but I don’t walk around thinking “I’m here! I’m really here!” with the sense of surprise I did the first few times. I now host or help cook for most holidays, I’ve helped to re-structure some holidays (like making Passover more kid-friendly), and I’ve figured out the family routines for others. And thankfully, I feel much less lost when it comes time to shop.

This year at Chanukah everything came together the best yet, and the night even managed to surprise me a bit, as I felt I bridged time as well as distance. The present I got my brother Steve, for example, was a gentle tease. He howled and loved it, but were I not back in town, I would never have been able to tread the line between gentle tease and mean one.

Then came the phone cord duet. At one point, my brother Steve had to get on the phone, and the phone he got on is the one that has hung on the wall by the kitchen for 47 years. For many years it was the only phone in the house, and its long cord enabled the pacing into the kitchen, halfway down the hall, into the living room, and to the threshold of the family room that is core to my brother’s telephone experience (and, to a lesser extent, mine). Thus, all members of the Goldstein family learned how to climb over and around and limbo under the phone cord while carrying all manner of items. When I caught myself unthinkingly lifting and/or crawling over the cord to take things to people, I realized I was exercising a long-dormant part of my muscle memory.

But the time traveling pinnacle of the evening came when folks were beginning to leave and my niece Maddie rushed breathlessly into the house from outside. “Has anyone seen my dad’s keys?” she asked.

At that point, my mom, my brother Perry, and I all burst into simultaneous gales of laughter that Maddie did not understand. And how could she understand that her bubbie, aunt, and uncle spent years in constant search for her Dad’s keys? She hasn’t been around long enough.

It’s these moments—the times when I am thrust back into my original immediate family—that make the holidays such a hoot.

Posted in Family, Jessica | 1 Comment »

Chanukah 2009

Dec 13th, 2009 by

Bubbie lights the menorah

Bubbie lights the menorah

Last night was the Goldstein family Chanukah party at Bubbie’s (my Mom’s) house.

Dreidels were spun, gelt and 7 pounds worth of latkes were consumed, and many blue-wrapped boxes were opened. Today the combined effects of the same are making me feel sluggish, and in a mere 4 hours we go over to friends to repeat the ritual.

I’m thinking next year we should investigate oven-baked latkes. Would that be so terrible?

More of the story to come soon. But the photo album is already uploaded.

Happy Chanukah everyone!

Posted in Family, Jessica, Little Boy | 2 Comments »

Self Reportage

Dec 11th, 2009 by

I’ll tell you something Simon said tonight in his bath, and you see if you can guess what was going on at the time.

Hint: I am so outnumbered in this house…

I made a terrible sound of bubbles!

Posted in Jessica, Little Boy, Simon says... | No Comments »

Storytelling

Dec 9th, 2009 by

Once upon a time, when we asked Simon what happened at school, his reply would be “Jillian cried”. No more and no less; we had no idea what actually went on during the day except for the calendar and notes the teachers sent home each week.

Saturday I asked Simon about school the previous week, and I got this*

“Lily cried. He** ran around. He got up. He got under the desk. Miss Jill got mad. Miss Judy, he got Lily out. Lily went into the hall. Miss Jill was mad. Lily sat in the chair in the hall. Lily cried and cried and cried. He cried really hard. It wasn’t circle time.”

Sounds like Ms. Jill has had better days, eh? I know this telling is more or less accurate because Evie reported seeing a nearly hysterical child in the hall when she picked Simon up from school on Thursday, and I’ve heard that one of the kids in Simon’s class is a bit of a runner. Last year Simon was the runner, so I’m frankly relieved that  this story wasn’t about him!

Lest this post sound overly negative, I’m also hearing about music, stories, computer time with Ms. Marcie, and Baron. In fact, the most common way Matt and I call tell Simon has awakened from a nap or overnight sleep is that we hear him singing. Typically, his favorite songs get rolled into a medley that includes “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” “ABC,” “The Wheels on the Bus,” “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “Old MacDonald.”

He’s perfectly capable of entertaining himself alone in bed this way for 20 minutes or more, and he’s also capable of waking up, singing for 15-20 minutes, and then falling right back asleep. Yesterday he proved that he’s equally capable of singing instead of napping for well over an hour. It’s pretty endearing. I don’t bother to go into his room unless it’s pretty late or I hear him explicitly say “I want to get down.”

I love the songs without reservation. I love the stories, too, but will love them more when they do not include someone crying.

* Names changed to avoid violating another child’s privacy.

** Simon still says “he” for boys and girls .

Posted in Jessica, KIP (Preschool), Little Boy, Simon says... | No Comments »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »