The biggest nerd I know

This evening while Aaron was putting the girls to bed, Juniper came out in tears that she wasn't getting to do her Bedtime Math problem. As Juniper explained it, she and Aaron had a "misunderstanding" about whether Juniper was helping Hazel with her problem, or doing Hazel's problem for her. I was predisposed to be sympathetic to Juniper because Aaron and I had just finished a conversation about how this year's new school schedule leaves her with appallingly little free time during the week.

Juniper (tearfully pleading): Maybe tomorrow, if we have some extra time, I can do my problem from today?

Sally: If you get ready quickly in the morning, you can absolutely do your bedtime math problem in the morning.

Juniper (still crying, but now somewhat hopeful): I know, maybe on Saturday, when I don't have to get ready, I'll have time to catch up! I can do all my problems on Saturday.

Sally: Honey, Dad and I were just talking about plans for Saturday. You can do whatever you want on Saturday. If you want to do math problems, you can do lots of math problems. If you want to go to Fernbank [the science museum], we can go to Fernbank. If you want to do both, we can do both. You're going to get to pick what we do on Saturday.

Juniper (post-cry whimpering): I wanna do both. I wanna do math problems and go to Fernbank on Saturday.

On the way out of the room, she spotted a new game Aaron's company is developing and added board games to her plan for the weekend.

Hazel's first purchase

Hazel does not yet get an allowance, but she had recently acquired two dollars. Juniper gave her a dollar as consolation when Hazel was devastated about dropping her sippy cup into a canyon. A neighbor gave her a dollar for no reason other than the fact that people from different cultures have different ways of expressing their affection for adorable kids.

Hazel took her $2.00 to the UUCA yard sale and was delighted to spend it on this small dollhouse. It was money quite well spent. Hazel loves her dollhouse and all the tiny things it contains. It's beenin heavy rotation since she got it a couple of weeks ago.

Classroom visit

Friday was orientation at the International Community School, where Juniper will start kindergarten tomorrow. ICS is a public charter school with a mission of providing high quality education to refugee, immigrant, and American-born children. We feel really lucky that Juniper won a spot in the lottery to attend ICS. We're excited about both the curriculum (emphasis on investigation and discovery, project-based learning) and the diverse community (half of the kids in her class are learning English as a second language).

 

We visited Juniper's classroom and were delighted to meet her teacher. Ms. Wong seems like she will be a great fit with Juniper, and Juniper was obviously smitten with her. At one point while we were there, Juniper needed to go to the bathroom. Ms. Wong discovered that the light in the girls' room was burned out and started to apologize. Juniper cheerfully replied, "It's ok, I like to be in the dark." Aaron and I raised our eyebrows and told Ms. Wong that Juniper was trying hard to impress her. At home, Juniper refuses to enter rooms with no light.

Mother Goose

Hazel has discovered Mother Goose, and those old nursery rhymes are in high rotation in our house. Humpty Dumpty is her favorite (she calls our nursery rhyme collection the "Humpty Dumpty book"), but she loves all of them. On a recent long car ride, Juniper entertained herself and Hazel with repeated readings of "Old Mother Hubbard." The girls were laughing themselves silly at the antics of Mother Hubbard's dog. Juniper occasionally had to stop reading to catch her breath from laughing so hard, and at some points they started laughing with anticipation before the punch lines even came: "oh, oh, oh, this is the funny part!!"

Aaron and I enjoyed their obvious delight in the silly poem, and we were struck by the thought that kids have been laughing at these rhymes for over 200 years. Many thanks to friends Diane and John, who gave us this book shortly after Juniper was born.

Shedding and adding layers

When getting dressed, Hazel has a strong and longstanding preference for layers - multiple shirts, shorts over pants, pants over pants. In some ways, it's a convenient trait for a baby or toddler. Spill food all over your top shirt? Just peel it off, and you've got another shirt underneath.

She's started sleeping out of her crib some nights, and one morning I found her wearing literally every single pair of underwear she owns. Getting her undressed to change her diaper felt like a cross between a clown car and a matryoshka doll. I just kept taking underwear off and laughing harder and harder at each new pair I discovered. She had on 11 pairs of underwear. All that elastic actually pinched her fat thighs so much that she was complaining her legs hurt, and a week later she still has red marks on the outside of her thighs.

Today she was wearing the perfect Hazel outfit: a short-sleeve shirt over a long-sleeve shirt, shorts over pants, and a dress over everything.

Independence

We let Juniper make her own decisions about how to spend her allowance. For some reason, she was determined to spend all of her money today. I pointed out that she just had a birthday and that she still has books she has not yet read, Legos she has not yet assembled, and science experiments she has not yet conducted. I pointed out that she might get more enjoyment out of her allowance by waiting to spend it when she hasn't just gotten a bunch of exciting birthday gifts. Nope. We were going to the Fernbank Museum, and she was determined to bring her allowance. All $6.00 of it. That's a lot of money for her.

Whenever we go to Fernbank, Juniper is fascinated by the photo booth. We never pay the $5.00 for photos. Never. Once, when she was two, Jason took her and Violet into the photo booth. I believe that is the only time in her life that she has done the Fernbank photo booth. The instant she saw the photo booth today, her face reflected the quick firing of synapses putting together the facts and coming up with a very desirable outcome. "I have my allowance, so I can do that today."

I pointed out the relative value of photos and Legos. I reminded her about the bonanza of birthday gifts at home. I stalled, hoping that by the time we were done looking at the new exhibit she would have forgotten about the photo booth. I stalled again once we were done with the new exhibit, this time with muffins for snack. When Juniper finished her snack and the other kids were still eating, she took her wallet and walked over to the photo booth.

It's amazing how often I underestimate my children. I remained seated and watched Juniper, assuming that she would not be able to figure out the process. I hoped that she would come back and ask for help, and I braced myself for the complete meltdown if the $5.00 was wasted on failed photos. After a few minutes, she came back with photos, pride, and happiness. I was completely wrong about the relative value of photos to Legos and the wisdom of spending large sums of money the week after one's birthday. I can't think of another $5.00 purchase that would have given Juniper that much satisfaction.

She spent her remaining dollar on a token. I was dismissive of that idea too. Then Juniper came home and gave her other museum token (from a trip to DC last summer) to Hazel, so that Hazel would be able to put a token in her penny collection book. Apparently, I know nothing about how children should spend their allowance.

The sheet of photos came with three identical strips. I paid Juniper $1.75 for one of the strips. They look like independence to me and are as beautiful as any of Aaron's best photos.

Aminals and ossicones

Hazel recently had her first trip to the zoo, and she loved it! She was observant (Ephant eating. More eating. Ephant eating food.), enthusiastic (More aminals! More aminals!), and covetous (Want giaffe. Want zeba.).

The gorillas at the Atlanta zoo are visible from multiple spots, including one where the people are inside a building with a glass wall that lets you get a pretty close-up look at the gorillas outside. From inside the building, you can also see one of the observation platforms where people can watch the gorillas from outside. When we were inside the building, Hazel was convinced that the people on the platform were with the gorillas, and she emphatically wanted to join them. While pointing at the gorillas and the observation platform, she demanded, "In! In! People in. Hazel in!"

Meanwhile, Juniper smarty pants informed a giraffe caretaker, "I'm very smart," and was treated to a lesson about ossicones (the horn-like protuberances on the top of a giraffe's head). Our little scientist was delighted. Part of me wants to teach my daughter some modesty and help her learn that it isn't really polite respond to a simple question about what giraffes eat by telling everyone how smart you are. But I suspect that modest four year olds are far less likely to have in-depth conversations about giraffe biology, and I'd rather cut off my toes than squash Juniper's curiosity and love of learning. As someone who supports activities to encourage girls' involvement with science, technology, engineering, and math, I feel especially protective of Juniper's love of science--but I confess that I do still cringe a little when she proclaims how smart she is or how much she knows about topic X. I mostly ignore the pride issue, hope that will sort itself out as she gets older, and try to shift the conversation from smarts to learning (how fun it is to learn new things, the fact that she knows about topic X because she reads and asks questions, and how cool it is that there is so much MORE she doesn't yet know about X).

Chaos!

We typically use our blog to share our children's adorable moments and proud accomplishments, but lest we be accused of painting a too-rosy picture of family life, here's a story of the madness we sometimes have in our house.

One day each week, I watch all of the kids in our childcare swap (Juniper, Hazel, Luke, Violet, and Henry). On this particular day, Violet was not yet home from school, so I had Juniper and the three toddlers. In the brief moment it took me to go to the bathroom, Hazel managed to bite both Luke and Henry--hard. Both boys had nasty bites and were understandably very upset. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I suspect that Hazel didn't want to share her crayons. While I was comforting the boys and giving Hazel the standard lecture about not biting, I heard Juniper call out from the bathroom: "Maaaahhhm, I had an accident. I got a little poop on my underwear." (For the record, Juniper has been fully potty trained for almost two years. I can't remember the last time she had a poop accident.) I scooped up Hazel, unwilling to leave her alone with the boys, and went back to the bathroom. Juniper was sitting on the toilet, and there was in fact a little poop on her underwear, and also a little poop on the floor where her underwear had fallen. I was scurrying about, cleaning the floor, starting a load of hot wash laundry, stalling Juniper's requests for help wiping, when I heard Hazel vehemently yelling, "NO COLOR! NO COLOR! NO COLOR!" I dropped whatever I was doing and hurried back to the dining room, afraid she might be about to bite one of the boys again. Hazel, passionate lover of order and propriety, was aghast at the sight of Luke coloring a large blue scribble all over the dining room wall. "No more crayons," I announced. "We do not use crayons for biting. We do not use crayons for coloring on the wall. We use crayons for coloring on paper. No biting! No walls! All done crayons!" I left the three toddlers whimpering by the now crayonless table and finished my laundry, my cleaning, my wiping. Start to finish, all of this took less than five minutes. And five minutes later, we had all moved on to some other activity, the crayons and poop and biting forgotten in the wonderful amnesia of the very young. The nice thing for me about having a day's worth of chaos all packed into a few moments was that I didn't even have time to be frazzled or upset. I was basically working on reflex, and by the time I had a moment to think about what was happening, it was already done and fodder for a laugh and a good story.

The arc of the universe

 Juniper and I were recently talking about eyes and the different eye colors in our family. This led to an oversimplified talk about genetics, in which I made some comment about how every person gets half of her DNA from her mom and half from her dad. Juniper indignantly interrupted me to announce, “But some kids have two moms!” This sparked a conversation about the difference between your biological parents (a man and a woman, parts of whose bodies combined to make your body) and your real parents (the people who love you most and care for you and make a family with you). Juniper was interested and full of questions. These are tough concepts to grasp, and I know she was fuzzy on the details, but I think she got the gist. At the very least, she got enough to satisfy her own curiosity at the moment, and eventually we moved on to some other topic.

Four year olds have a hard time with abstract ideas, but they can be fierce in their defense of What They Know Is True. When I started spouting some crazy nonsense about how all kids have a mom and a dad, Juniper called me to task because she knows that isn’t true. She has friends with two moms, and even a kid—perhaps especially a kid—can see that those families are as real as any other. Many people of our generation have chosen to stand on the side of love, but it has never crossed Juniper’s mind that there could be any other side. Families are families; moms are moms; love is love. What’s complicated about that? I’m grateful to live in a time and place where my child can take these things for granted. I expect that one day, she will be horrified and baffled to learn that not long ago, there was a time in our country when same-sex couples couldn’t marry.

Are we there yet? No. Are we bending toward justice? Absolutely.

Early reader

Hazel has loved hearing stories and flipping the pages of board books for months. Recently, her enjoyment of books has expanded. She will point to pictures in the books, sometimes pointing out an object she recognizes, sometimes with an inquisitive "einh?" When she sees an animal that she recognizes, she'll often make the sound for that animal. (Her sheep's "baa" is exemplary; her cows have no vowels and simply say "mmmm.")

This evening before bed, we read the delightful Is Your Mama a Llama? When she turned to the page with a seal mama, Hazel got a giant smile on her face and began excitedly clapping. (Sometimes she manages the clap+bark for what a seal says, but it's usually just the clap.) She was completely unwilling to turn the page, so we spent a few minutes clapping and barking and pointing out the seal. Finally, I was ready to move along with the story and put her to bed, so I took over her regular job and turned the page. She spent the rest of the book trying to flip backwards and had no interest in turning the pages the way I wanted her to. (She was still happy to point out the various animals on the different pages.) When we finished the story, I gave Hazel the book. She started and the beginning and deliberately turned page by page until she found what she wanted - the seal!

Is it real?

On a recent trip to Fernbank, Juniper met the museum's Santa-saurus. She was entranced. She petted it, hugged it, put her head in its mouth, and tried to figure out the nature of its existence.

Juniper: Is it real?

Aaron: What do you think?

Juniper: Well, at first I didn't think it was real. But then it sat down, so I think it's real.


She is very interested in determining whether or not things are real. We have clarified that superheroes are not real, jellyfish are real, and dinosaurs were real but are no longer living. She recently informed Aaron that, "the problem with superheroes is that they aren't real." They talked for a while about characters and fiction and how things don't have to be real to be good. She took it all in and then asked whether or not zombies are real. After Aaron told her that they aren't real, she thought about it for a minute and then told him that they are real, because she saw them at the DragonCon parade. He explained that the zombies at the parade were just people in zombie costumes, like she sometimes wears a costume. She thought about that for a bit, and then asked him which part of the DragonCon parade is the scary part.

"I don't think there is a scary part," he replied.

"But Ms. Paula said there was a scary part."

"Did you think there was a scary part, or was it just fun?"

"It was just fun."


In a separate conversation, she announced that when she grows up, Batman will be real, because she's going to be Batman.

Hat, bat, bit, bath, sit, sad

This evening on Skype, Violet showed us and read us a long list of words she had written. She was really reading, sounding out some words and recognizing other sight words, not just reciting a memorized list. Her writing is delightfully legible. When she held her paper up to the camera, we could read every word on it.

My brain has a hard time understanding how this fat, waddling force of destruction and need turned into that accomplished little kid proudly and determinedly reading her words: hat, bat, bit, bath, sit, sad. Thankfully, my heart has better sense and no questions about how she got from point A to point B. No questions, just an overwhelming sense of wonder and gratitude. It feels good to love someone this much, even when it feels bad to have someone you love this much be far away.

You know you're a heavy sleeper when...

Your dad can pick you up out of bed, carry you to the bathroom, pull down your PJs, set you on the potty and support your weight while you pee, pick you back up, pull up your PJs, carry you back to your room, and lay you back down in bed - all without waking up.

Hazel, meanwhile, woke herself up from her morning nap by sneezing.

Peek-a-Boo Kitty

(If you watch the video on the vimeo site, the quality will be much better than watching it embedded in the blog. Just click on the vimeo logo at the bottom right corner of the video above.)

According to a really interesting book we recently read, the quality of sibling relationships at six months is predictive of what the relationship will look like till one of the kids leaves the house. If that's true, we hope to be in for a pretty nice ride these next 15ish years.

This video is a few months old, but if anything, Juniper and Hazel's relationship has just gotten better. Juniper is a loving and engaged big sister, and Hazel adores her. I recently had the glorious experience of talking with two friends about their trip to Italy while Juniper and Hazel entertained each other! Juniper was being silly, and Hazel was being a great audience, and we grown-ups got at least 7 uninterrupted minutes to talk about boring grown-up things.

Legos

Those of you who know Aaron well know that he is obsessive about his hobbies. For much of his childhood, Legos were his passion, to which he devoted his free time and his allowance. Amazingly, his Lego collection survived younger siblings, multiple moves, and numerous yard sales, and is currently in several large bins in our barn. He recently pulled out a small selection of "big girl blocks" for Juniper. Those of you who know Juniper well will not be surprised to hear that she was delighted.



We often find Juniper curled up asleep with a book. For a few days after the Legos came out, they trumped books as her post-bedtime activity of choice.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Rockstar

Last week Juniper's preschool had a potluck picnic, with musical accompaniment from one of the dads. In good preschool fashion, there's a mic at kid height. During one song break, Juniper blew us away by unexpectedly, and quite seriously, striding up to the microphone and belting out "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." She needed no prompting or encouragement, just a guitarist who was willing to keep up.

Perhaps one of these days Aaron and I will stop being so amazed by the boldness of childhood. No fear, no hesitation, just the simple idea that singing as loudly and clearly as you can in front of a big crowd seems like a fun thing to do.

In the Tent

Hazel grasps...



...while Juniper wiggles and flames.



Juniper actually got TWO tents for her birthday. They are obviously from people who know her well; she loves playing in both of them. We've designated one for inside and one for outside, which seems to maximize playing opportunities while minimizing mess. Hazel, Juniper, and I had a fun time in the inside tent yesterday. As you can see in the video above, Hazel spent much of her time intently focused on one of door flap ties. She also enjoyed some nice, frantic kicking. At one point, I was outside the tent and looked down to see one fat, flailing leg sticking out of the tent window.

Near the end of Juniper's video, she makes a comment about a Flame On book. She got a wonderful treat at school yesterday. A few weeks ago, when they were learning about the sun, they did some paintings in Juniper's ideal color palette: reds, oranges, and yellows. Her teacher often turns the kids' art into books, and she made these sun paintings into book that could not be more perfect for Juniper. The full text of the book is approximately as follows:

Cover - What time is it?
Pg. 1 - It's time to FLAME ON.
Pgs. 2-7 - It's time for [child's name] to FLAME ON.

Each kid had a page, and when Shannon read the child's name, it was her turn to run flaming around the classroom. The kids all loved the activity, especially Juniper (who was conveniently wearing her new flaming costume from Janet).

Peace Offering

Juniper and Violet were absolutely delighted to see one another, and they still play together in an interactive, engaged way that's amazingly different from how Juniper plays with any of her other friends. But they are three, and they do still fight about the things that three year olds fight about. They had a big kerfuffle when Juniper "stole" Violet's flush by swooping in and flushing the toilet after Violet had used it. Violet was very upset, and the grownups had to facilitate a long discussion about feelings and fairness and who gets to flush when. It was at the same time completely serious for the kids and completely absurd.

Once Juniper understood Violet's take on the situation, she tried to apologize (a real apology, not the breezy and insincere "sorry" she usually tosses out), but Violet wasn't ready to accept her apology and tell Juniper "it's ok." Violet had been unjustly wronged, and it was not yet ok for her. Juniper briefly wandered off and then came back with the sweetest and most ineffective peace offering I've ever seen. She came up to Violet and oh-so-sincerely asked her, "Did you know that Phobos and Deimos are Mars' moons?" The look on her face was sweet and hopeful, shining with the generous satisfaction of having just shared something wonderful with Violet.

Kid, you mean so well, but you've still got a big lesson to learn about knowing your audience.

Juniper the pirate

Hoist the mizzenmast!

Step two in the fight against lazy eye is a patch for Juniper. She's supposed to wear it for 6 hours/day, which typically means that it goes on when she gets up and comes off around nap time. She's been wearing the patch for a week now, and so far it's going well. We don't know how long she'll have to wear it. Results vary widely by kid, and it can take anywhere from a few months to a few years for the patch to work.

I have to express my deep gratitude to the world that patches have gotten much cooler than when we were kids. We were able to go online and order two mixed boxes of patches that include rocket ships, dragons, flames, aliens, spiders, stars, trains, and soccer players. (Trains and soccer players came with the rocket ships, aliens, and dragons. We predict they will be the very last patches used.) So far she's very enthusiastic about putting on her patches in the morning. The only hard part is deciding which one she wants to wear. "Well, if I wanna be a dragon, I can wear this one. But maybe I wanna be an astronaut." So far, the patch with rocket ships seems to be her favorite.

On Monday, she was particularly excited to wear one of her spider patches because they were studying spiders and making yarn webs at school. Juniper's been looking forward to making, "a whole mess of webs" ever since she helped Miss Shannon create this week's lesson plan.

NASA

While in Texas visiting family last month, we took a trip to the Houston Space Center. It sparked a delightful Space Phase for Juniper. I don't know how long this phase will last, but Aaron and I are certainly doing all we can to encourage it. Our encouragement includes everything from regularly reading "the space book" (a picture encyclopedia we got at NASA), making up a bedtime song that's all about the Solar System, pretending the car is a space shuttle and counting down to blastoff before driving, and reading a graphic novel called "Zita the Spacegirl" (recommended by Juniper's teacher, who brilliantly picked up on the intersection of space and comics as a way to rock Juniper's world).

Juniper has requested that we get her some models of the planets, which we may do for her birthday. She recently told us that there's a "Planet Store" we should visit. It's between Arkansas and California; you have to take a plane to get there.



Juniper and her Gramma in front of the Saturn V rocket. The space shuttles made the biggest impression on Juniper. If you ask her whether she saw any rockets at NASA, she may say no. Here's photographic evidence to the contrary. In fact, she saw a rocket that's approximately the size of a football field.



Mission Control. It was pretty cool to see the actual, original Mission Control room. It looked familiar from countless movies, TV shows, and pictures, even though I couldn't tell you one specific media source where I know I've seen it. The red phone is a hotline to the Navy, which was used to coordinate pickup of the Apollo astronauts.



Mom took a spin (literally) on this astronaut training activity. She had to rotate the black circle on the device hanging above her, while her chair moved around in erratic circles.



This is a prototype of a possible rover for a future Mars mission. Apparently it's pretty new and exciting, even for people who are at the space center all the time. Our tour bus driver pulled out his phone and started taking pictures when we saw it.



In the kids' area, there was an exhibit about how peoples' weight would differ on various planets/moons. Apparently, on Jupiter Juniper would most resemble a butterball turkey. (And, yes, she has noticed that, "Jupiter is kind of like Juniper." That's her second most reliable planetary tag line, surpassed only by, "Saturn has 22 moons!!!")


To wrap up this long NASA-inspired post, here's a recent conversation between Juniper and Aaron:

A: (referencing one of Juniper's books) "I love you to the moon and back." The moon is pretty far away, but it's not the farthest thing away.
J: Pluto is very far away.
A: I love you to Pluto and back.
J: Speaking of Pluto, it's not a planet. It's just a planetoid.