Leap Day!

Mer was excited to hear that today is Leap Day. What's that, she asked? My first explanation was a shorthand, off-the-cuff explanation involving the earth traveling around the sun taking a little longer than what we call a year, because people made calendars, so we have to catch up. Mer understands about catching up - she also understands about having backups for things, like an extra sour cream in the fridge at all times - but her astronomy is not that strong yet.

Second try: it's a holiday! She was deflated to learn that it did not involve 1) decorations or 2) special songs or 3) desserts. At least not traditionally.

Third try: February 29 rarely happens, so it's special - only every seven years! I said. Four years, Derek reminded me. The earth takes 365.25 days to go around the sun, so every four years. Of course. Evidently my astronomy is not that strong either.

-JRR

Cousin props

A belated congratulations to Natalya Jensen, cousin to Meredith and Elaine, on her excellent spelling abilities. She won her school and got to the final round of the regional spelling bee. She is pictured in this Green Bay Press-Gazette link.

Twenty questions

Meredith likes to play an informal game of 20 questions. Usually, she thinks of an animal and we ask yes or no questions until we get it. Sometimes it's difficult because she isn't sure about the answers. For example, apparently tigers hibernate. When asked if her animal was bigger than Elaine, she said she didn't think so. She then said it was bigger than her and even bigger than a horse. It's difficult to narrow down to this size-shifting creature.

I got to think of an animal for Meredith to guess. She narrowed it down to an animal that had a shell, was small, and wasn't a turtle. She asked, "Is it the size of a snail?" "Yes, exactly the size of a snail." After a moment, she correctly guessed it was a snail.

Other times it gets easier. When asked if her animal has four legs, Meredith says yes, but then starts consulting the picture of a crab on the fridge. After counting quietly to herself she allows that it might have six legs. She tells us though that people don't eat these animals because they have pincers. This is despite seeing frozen crabs every time we go to Coastal Seafoods.

Top songs

The following are the top 25 most played songs in order in my iPod. Meredith has a hand in every last song. (Well, I see one song that isn't a Meredith request; but I'm too embarrassed to admit which one.)

1. Rocket Boy - Liz Phair
2. Bicycle Race - Queen
3. Here Come the ABCs - They Might Be Giants
4. Good Vibrations - The Beach Boys
5. Alphabet of Nations - They Might Be Giants
6. Daydream Believer - The Monkees
7. Wendy - The Beach Boys
8. Rock & Roll - Led Zeppelin
9. E Eats Everything - They Might Be Giants
10. Help Me Rhonda - The Beach Boys
11. Come Sail Away - Eric Cartman of South Park
12. We Will Rock You - Queen
13. Final Countdown - Europe
14. We Are the Champions - Queen
15. It's Not Unusual - Tom Jones
16. Baba O'Riley - The Who
17. Free Bird - Lyndard Skynard
18. Downtown - Petula Clark
19. Flying V - They Might Be Giants
20. Go For G! - They Might Be Giants
21. Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes
22. Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who
23. Wouldn't It Be Nice - The Beach Boys
24. Sloop John B - The Beach Boys
25. Fun, Fun, Fun - The Beach Boys

Careful with baby

Meredith's pre-kindergarten teacher is expecting a child next month. This has given her class many opportunities to discuss babies. (It also caused Meredith to ask Jen for the first time recently how the baby gets inside the tummy in the first place. The answer was deferred.)

Earlier this week, the children were asked if they had any baby advice for their teacher. Reportedly, Meredith had one piece of important advice: "You have to be very very very very very very very very careful with the baby."

We continue to have to say things like: Get off your sister. Let go of your sister. Don't pull on your sister. Don't wrap your legs around your sister. Don't throw things around your sister. Don't drop things on your sister. Don't wrap your legs around your sister. Be careful! Don't put things in your sister's face. Stop blocking your sister. Don't push your sister. Get your feet off your sister. Don't wrap your legs around your sister. Stop jumping around your sister. Please get your legs off your sister!

With all that repetition, it's nice to hear she's internalizing at least some of it. Now if only we didn't have to say it in the first place.

Learning the Minnesota ways

Most days when I drive Meredith to school, we listen to music on the iPod. We do a good job of taking turns. Meredith requests The Who or the Beach Boys these days. With some of the songs, she asks me to do the singing while she pretends to do drums or guitar or both. Even when I was hoarse and unable to put out anything remotely musical with my voice, she firmly requested my participation.

This morning we were listening to the Moody Blues. I was singing along mindlessly while we were driving down I-394. Meredith says something in the back. "What is it?" I ask. She repeats, "You don't have to sing, daddy." I.E. stop singing, it's annoying.

I comply without hesitation, because frankly, I'd find my singing annoying too. I'm fortunate that she tolerates my singing most of the time and even continues to request it. I know that won't last forever. What I find remarkable is the hint of passive aggressiveness in her request. Now, true, she was simply reminding me that I didn't have to sing as she didn't request it for that song. Most four year olds are incapable of intentional passive aggressive speech. Usually I'm finding myself explain things like, "Telling me the food I made you is 'really yucky' is not very nice. There are better ways to express it." Then we go into the examples of better ways. Four year olds are still generally brutally honest.

This remark has simply caused me to reflect on the suggestions I'm making to her, as well as the communication I'm modeling. Much of it is of the polite, passive aggressive, Minnesota nature. I have my own mixed feelings on what's known as "Minnesota nice." By and large, I prefer the way people communicate and deal with each other in Minnesota and the Midwest in general. Spending time on the East Coast has taught me that there are brusque, less tactful, simply aggressive ways to talk. And I didn't like it, even though it was refreshing at times.

At this rate, our girls will be true Midwesterners. Hopefully, polite, respectful, and friendly, and not too passive aggressive.

Reflections are

Elaine loves looking in the mirror. I'll hold her in front of the mirror and she'll smile and wave and try to hit it. One wonders at times what she thinks of this reflection. Does she think it's another baby? Perhaps one very clever at copying her actions?

It's become clear over the past weeks that she recognizes my image as a reflection. She'll look back and forth between me and my reflection and treat us the same way. She easily makes eye contact with my reflection and does silly things.

Today, I lifted a hand-held mirror of Meredith's to Elaine's face. She did something interesting. She saw her reflection in the mirror, then deliberately looked behind her to see who was there. After a momentary search, she gazed back at the mirror and waved. She then smiled and then started to try to hit the mirror. It seemed quite clear to me that she recognized that the mirror reflected people in front of it, but was unsure at least on this occasion if the reflection was herself or another baby in the vicinity. Sometimes it's difficult to figure out how these kids think. They have so much to learn and put together on a daily basis. Good thing they are so curious.

Rock and roll

We have a couple of girls who appreciate some good rock and roll dance moves.

Elaine often hits the keyboard until it plays this song she can dance to. Sometimes she looks like she's going to fall right over, but she'll stop herself with her hands.



One wonders where Elaine learned her dance moves...

Winter pictures

Some pictures from the last couple of weeks as we deal with the continuing winter cold.

Catching up to Elaine

Elaine is an active 10 month old. Not only does she continue to crawl quickly around the house as if she owns it, Elaine is learning new skills. She is pulling up on all sorts of things. Recently, she spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out how to get her whole body up a step. She made excellent progress, bringing most of her body up, but eventually gave up. Elaine was trying to get to Meredith, who wisely surmised the way to get some space from her clingy little sister was to go half way up the stairs.

This morning, I entered Elaine's bedroom to see her standing up in her crib for the first time. I don't know how long she had been standing there. She's still learning on how to get down from a stand. This was the first time she pulled up all the way by herself. In the past weeks she often has grabbed our hands to pull up into a standing position. It's a whole new chapter here. I'm going to have to get the baby gate on the stairs pretty soon!

Elaine's two bottom teeth are sticking well into her mouth and the top ones are imminent. Yet, she still doesn't want to try to chew anything or feed herself. We give her cut up cheerios. But despite our demonstrations, she prefers to push them around and hold them instead of placing them in her mouth. Her favorite food continues to be yogurt.

On the verbal front, Elaine is starting to say "mama" more often than chance in reference to her mom. I swear that I thought I heard her say something like "bah!" to a ball a couple times last weekend, but it's hard to say for sure.

Kindergarten versus computers

Recently, Meredith's school has been doing a marketing push for kindergarten. They've engaged the pre-kindergarten kids and their parents on the subject of staying at the school for kindergarten. As part of this push, Meredith got an invite from her "kindergarten friend" to visit the kindergarten class and see all there was to see. We let her do a special full day last week (kindergarten at the school is all-day), which she loved. The parents have gotten an orientation and some literature.

Overall, Meredith has been very excited about being in kindergarten next August. She's talked about it a lot and sees it as the big milestone it is. She likes her school and was impressed with the kindergarten experience she had.

Today, while we were driving home from the zoo, Meredith told us that she didn't want to go to kindergarten at her school next year. We asked her why. She told us that it was her decision and that she decided not to. We told her it was not her decision, but we were very interested to hear what she thought, and again, why she didn't want to do kindergarten at her school.

We went back and forth a bit, explaining over and over again that "because that's what I decided" isn't a reason per se. Eventually, it became clear that she didn't want to be in school all day, but preferred the half-day experience she currently has in pre-kindergarten.

"Why don't you want to be in school all day?"

"Because then I can't play games on the computer."

Recently, Meredith had been introduced to some educational games at PBSkids.org. It's become an infatuation. I point out that she can still play computer games even if she's in school all day (evenings and weekends), as well as point out that she currently isn't playing on the computer in the afternoons anyways and that wasn't going to change. The conversation then devolved further into her saying she was going to play on the computer every afternoon and me saying that she wasn't. Meredith informed me that that was her opinion and that she was right. "Meredith, you're entitled to your opinion, but as the person in charge I can say confidently you're not going to play computer every day." (Why was I continuing this conversation?)

When we got home, it didn't take long for her to ask to play on the computer. "No, we're going to have lunch now." She pouted a little. I guess we'll have to sell the concept of all-day kindergarten a little more to compete with the almighty computer.