Summer always seems short here in Minnesota.  I don’t think it really feels like summer until the neighborhood kids are done with school for the year, and here in Minneapolis it was about mid-June when schools let out for summer break. The pools don’t open until around June 15th, and this year it wouldn’t have been warm enough to go swimming until then anyway.

We did “Mission to the City” with Urban Refuge at the end of June.  Looking back on it, it kind of feels like this was the beginning of our summer, because it was only really warm and summer-like outside for maybe a week prior to this.  I participated in almost all the Mission to the City activities, while Tony did the night and weekend events.  We even brought the kids along for some of the events (they liked helping out at the BBQs).  I really enjoyed having the time dedicated to serving in my community and learning more about the city I’m living in.

Fourth of July followed quickly after Mission to the City, which was followed by Tony having back-to-back deadlines at work, during which time he slept very little…  …And Tony also had the misfortune of getting sick while not getting much sleep, which resulted in him developing Pneumonia.  Tony spent the rest of July recovering and trying to get lots of sleep.  During the month of July, the kids and I spent a few days at the lake cabin with my mom, and also tried to get out and enjoy summer with trips to local parks and pools.

We made it to Ames for two weddings in less than a month in late July/mid August and also made a family trip to the lake cabin the first weekend in August.  The kids and I crammed in more and more trips to the pools as the month of August wore on, knowing that our outdoor swimming days would soon be over for another long 9+ months.  We all went to the Minnesota State Fair a little over a week ago and spent a day enjoying plentiful farm animals, 4-H projects, and, of course, cheese curds and various foods-on-a-stick. We enjoyed our final summer weekend this Labor Day weekend by doing projects around the house, going out for a picnic and concert at Lake Harriet, and having a special Labor Day dinner on our back patio.

We also tried to have a garden this summer, with a only small amount of success. (And by “We” I mostly mean Tony with a bit of help from Madeline.) Our back “yard” is really a big patio with raised garden beds surrounding it.  And a huge old Catalpa tree shading the whole thing.  We started tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, carrots, sweet corn and beans in small seed trays inside the house this spring.  We only wanted to make a minimal financial investment in our vegetable garden, since we knew that our conditions were not ideal for garden success.   So far, we have harvested a couple dozen cherry tomatoes (mostly picked and eaten one or two at a time by the kids), about 3 regular-size tomatoes, and one very tiny carrot. Only one stubby corn plant survived, and something ate it’s one ear of corn.  The peppers didn’t flower until recently, so won’t have time to develop before the frost.  The eggplants never did much.  We might still get some beans and a few more carrots.  And we’ll still get a few more tomatoes before it gets too cold.  At least we can have hope that maybe next summer we can have a better spot for a garden — we’ve already decided not to stay in our current house when our lease expires in 2009, whether that means moving to another house here in Minneapolis or moving back to Iowa or elsewhere if God so leads after Tony’s current job is finished.

The weather today is appropriate for the first day of “fall” — though it was approaching 90 degrees yesterday, today it’s raining and below 70 degrees during the mid-afternoon. I was originally planning on beginning our family’s fall schedule today and starting Madeline’s first day of home preschool for this year.  But, my mom asked if Madeline could come and spend a couple more days at her house (Madeline’s third trip to stay at Grandma’s house since the beginning of the summer).  So, our “fall” and our preschool year at home will wait until next week.

Tony is gone to a men’s retreat tonight, and so the kids and I went to have dinner and play with some friends at their house. When we got back, there were no obviously large enough places to park within a half a block. I circled a couple times and made a half-hearted try and a couple spots, but nothing looked big enough for me with my non-existent parallel parking skills.

Then I had a brilliant idea — I would just pull the car around and park in the off street parking behind our house! We usually never park there, because it involves going through three locked doors, while coming the the front involves one locked door. It isn’t extremely well lit back there, so I didn’t notice how high the snow really was…until I drove into it and promptly got stuck.

You would think I would know better since I have lived in a snowy climate my whole life, but I just wasn’t thinking very clearly at 8:30pm when I just really wanted to get inside and get my kids to bed. I rocked the car back and forth a little bit, but the tires mostly only spun. I knew that I probably needed a shovel and maybe some ice melting salt to get the car unstuck…but I also had two tired kids in the car that needed to get inside… and I didn’t think I could shovel it out very fast by myself.

The day was saved by our downstairs neighbor. We all went inside and knocked on Michael’s door downstairs. He was home, and came out to shovel the car out while I brought the kids inside, and he even pulled it around front and got it into one of the parking spots that I gave up on. I felt pretty silly making such a dumb winter driving mistake, but at least the problem was solved and the kids got to bed before it got too late. Maybe I need to find a way to practice my parallel parking skills in the Ody (or be willing to park way down the block!)

Then while I was at the mall with the kids a week or so ago, Madeline spotted a woman wearing a pretty dress and a pageant-esque banner reading “the tooth fairy.” There was a whole display promoting dental health, including said Tooth Fairy handing out small white bags for teeth. After explaining to Madeline the whole concept of losing one’s baby teeth and expecting that maybe the tooth fairy would exchange them for small coins (which didn’t really phase her, surprisingly enough, despite how odd that must seem to her that her teeth will all fall out in a couple years), I thought maybe she would lose interest until she could herself perhaps be visited by the tooth fairy.

Then, she managed to meet another tooth fairy less than a week later at the Children’s Museum. This tooth fairy was giving out not just one, but two different boxes for storing lost baby teeth! And Madeline got to make a “tooth fairy wand” too.

At first Madeline seemed to have gotten a little bit confused, and referred to the taker-of-teeth as the “Fairy Tooth Mother.” We  got that all straightened out, and Madeline has been talking about the tooth fairy nearly every day since. In the past few days she has mentioned “playing tooth fairy” several times, but tonight was the first time we had all-out pretend play about the tooth fairy.

Here’s how it went: Madeline wanted to be the tooth fairy first, and as we set the stage, she let me know that the kitchen is the mall — because the tooth fairy lives there, you know? She had several other important instructions to give: You have to go and get your tooth box from the tooth fairy at the mall, then you can go home and lose a tooth…then you can call the tooth fairy on her cell phone, and let her know you need a pick up. Then the tooth fairy comes with her easter basket filled with play money. She’ll take your tooth box and give you money in return. But don’t forget to go back to the mall to get your tooth box back before you need to lose another tooth.

The vote was something like:

• Ron Paul — 99 votes
• Mitt Romney — 84 votes
• Mike Huckabee — 53 votes
• John McCain — 53 votes

It seems that Romney won the state, but we’ll see how things go. The next phase of our caucus in March 15th. I’m an alternate delegate, so I’ll show up then and see what happens.

The great delusion of the build up to sort-of-interesting Tuesday is that it is SUPREMELY-IMPORTANT Tuesday. It isn’t. It is just a day when the presidential nominating process takes its largest leap forward. It is just a day when primary elections are held from sea to shining sea. It is just [sic] day shaped by politics.

Read more here: http://blog.beliefnet.com/jwalking/2008/02/sortofinteresting-tuesday.html

God is indeed sovereign, no matter who gets the nomination or wins the election. Perhaps just as important is the fact that the American public still holds far more power to affect change than the White House. I find these to be very comforting facts.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to go caucus tonight, and might even stick around to make sure that my unbound delegate will stick to the issues I care about at the next level of the caucus. I’m just not going to get bent out of shape about this whole deal. I’m also going to continue working for change where it really matters — in the lives and hearts of individuals.

I hope you can do the same.

But there is something special about preschool-age pretending. It moves from a simple, “I’m pretending to make you some eggs.” to “Let’s play dinner. I’m the dad and I’m going to work. You’re the mom and you are going to stay home and cook dinner. When I get home, we’ll sit at the table and eat. Okay?”

The kids and I generally spend at least an hour a day engaging in pretend play, acting out various scenarios together. Sometimes, it feels like the three of us spend all day doing this (or at least all day when it’s not meal time, computer time, or TV time). Well, it’s really just me and Madeline doing the pretending — Erik is occasionally assigned a part in the drama by Madeline which I have to help him act out, and other times he just plays with his toys, while we chatter away.

Sometimes the scenes we act out are the typical preschooler fare of playing house (well, mostly the cooking and eating meals part of playing house), playing with baby dolls (Madeline is almost always the mommy to the baby dolls, of course), playing doctor to both people and animals, and playing with blocks to build castles inhabited by small plastic figurines that stand in as a king, prince, princess, and so forth (Yesterday, the Barney with the raincoat was the king, Bert was a prince, and a Pooh in a bunny costume came to visit. But Madeline decided there was no room in the castle tower, so the Pooh figurine couldn’t stay for dinner. Later, after a castle expansion, Elmo came calling and was allowed to stay for a meal.)

Madeline also thinks of many other creative ways to pretend. We’ve been playing “beach” the last couple of days. This involves “packing up” — one of her favorite pretending devices. We find some kind of appropriate bag, and go around the house finding real or pretend items to fill it. The beach bag contained real swimsuits and a beach towel, an empty plastic bottle to stand in for sunscreen, a play cell phone, pretend keys, and Madeline’s sunglasses. At first the play was pretty typical — we pretended to drive to the beach, we pretended to put on swimsuits (Madeline really put hers on), we “swam” around the living room, and we made “sand castles” out of various types of blocks.

Then Madeline decided we were going to play “crab” at the beach. “One person does a crab walk, over there in the water,” she told me, “then you try to come and swim in the water, but the crab is in the way, and the crab comes and grabs you.” We took turns playing a few basic variations on this for a while. Then Madeline decided the crabs were having a marching band in the water. Then the crabs got on a plane and went far away on vacation (this turned into hide-and-seek and I had to go “find the crab” in her faraway vacation spot aka the corner of the kitchen).

Besides playing beach, Madeline has also enjoyed playing “bear cave” (our play tent is the cave), “slumber party”, “going to grandma’s house”, and “glass slipper ball” just to name a few of her many scenarios.

I know that just pretending for the sake of pretending is an important part of development, but I’m also trying to make the most of the time. I try and challenge Madeline to think creatively by asking her challenging questions or taking the scenario in a direction she might not expect. Lessons on character or manners or social skills can easily become part of almost any pretending situation. And of course I fit in opportunities to talk about the usual preschool stuff like letters, numbers, colors, shapes, etc.

I don’t always enjoy the pretending. Sometimes it is down right exhausting. I occasionally wonder if Madeline enjoys it so much because it puts her in the drivers seat. I also wonder how beneficial it would be if she could have more opportunities to pretend with kids her own age or a little older. Whatever the case, I’m sure we will be doing much more pretending in the days to come.

The picture below doesn’t really do the color very much justice.  It was hard to get a good shot in the late afternoon, cloudy light:

We still have the Volvo.   However after nearly two months without a working vehicle of our own and no end in sight to the Volvo’s woes, we decided we really needed a reliable vehicle.  We feel very fortunate at having found a steal of a deal on the Odyssey — it was the first vehicle Tony looked at it.  He liked it so much (and it was such an amazing deal we didn’t want to let get away) that I didn’t even see it before we bought it — we just talked it over on the phone!

Tony will continue to replace parts on the Volvo to find whatever is causing it’s abnormal behavior (10 parts have been replaced so far with little improvement).  Our plan is to get the Volvo in shape to sell…and then either sell it…or keep it and sell the Odyssey if it turns out we don’t like it as much as our beloved station wagon after a couple months.   Tony is pondering putting them both up for sale when the Volvo is ready and then just keeping which ever doesn’t sell first.  Or maybe we’ll sell both and fund Tony’s dream of having a vehicle that runs on biodiesel or electric power. 

Erik Learns to Crawl!

Erik turned 10 months old on Friday, and he celebrated by crawling. He had made a few good attempts in the days leading up to Friday, but he had his first repeated successes on that day. He is crawling more and more each day and learning to explore. In the last few days he has also perfected the art of pulling himself up to standing, and has made a few attempts to “cruise” (take steps while holding on to furniture). At the rate he is moving through these motion milestones, maybe we can expect him to be walking before his birthday rolls around!

Ice Skating at the Park

Madeline is learning to ice skate, and we took a family ice skating trip to nearby Powderhorn Park on Sunday afternoon. I ice skated too, but I had the camera the whole time, so my skating does not appear in the video, unfortunately. Erik got to ride along in the stroller!

Just for fun: Madeline dancing

This is a common sight at our house — Madeline dressing up in her “princess clothes” or “fancy gowns” and putting on dance shows. She was singing too — this video really would have been a lot better with sound!

(For anyone who cares, Tony put together the Ice Skating video using a trial version of some video editing software. I made the crawling video using the video editing tools on eyespot.com. I tried to do it on the youtube remixer so that all our videos could be there, but I couldn’t get it to work for me. If you have just a little bit of video editing you want to do, eyespot is a good bet — it is pretty easy to use!)

“Mommy, are you old?”

“Come here and see this Daddy…It’s increb-a-ble!” (Said when she saw me packing into a box a bunch of clothes that no longer fit her.)

(Said after she comes into the living room carrying a baby doll): “Look, I have baby Jesus. He was born in a manger. But now I am going to take him to the hospital so he can see a doctor. He’s sick.”

Madeline: “What will Erik be when he grows up? A grown-up?”
Me: “Yes, and he will be a man, and maybe a Daddy.”
Madeline: “A man? Wow, that’s a funny joke!”

“A new baby was born at the hospital today…A baby duckie!”

“All my candy is almost gone. But when it’s gone, I’ll just go trick-or-treating again and get more!”

(Said as we are making cookies): “I don’t think I like chocolate chips. They’re too spicy. No, I’m not being silly”
(Then, five minutes later): “mmm, these are good chocolate chip cookies.”

(Said after hearing a note of frustration in my voice): “Mommy, are you sad? mad? bad? tired? fustated?”

Madeline: “My real birthday is in May. But my pretend birthday is in March”
Me: “But I thought you said that your pretend birthday party was going to be today? It’s January right now. ”
Madeline: “I’m just pretending it’s March too”

“I want to pray before lunch! …Dear Man, thank you for this food.  Thank you for God.  Amen.”

Moving right along…I’ve been trying several new recipes this month.  I’m most proud of the Curry meal I made this past weekend:

I would say it’s basically an Indian meal, though I am sure they are not eating too much curried Beef in India! The dishes are (clockwise, beginning at the top):  “Bombay” curry (Not sure how it got that name — it’s basically curried beef with a sauce that contains coconut milk, making it a little bit sweet), Curried Zucchini, White rice, and Naan (an Indian flat bread — though this batch was not particularly flat). I was very happy with the meal overall — it was not really spicy at all, much to Tony’s disappointment and Madeline’s delight.  Hopefully I can find some middle ground on the heat level next time!

This month I’ve also tried new recipes for Thai Chicken Pizza, Cheese stuffed meatballs, Pork Chop and Apple Skillet, Shepherd’s Pie, and a pasta dish with spinach and tomatoes. So far they have all been generally successful, though I managed to get too much peanut butter in the Thai pizza…and though the pizza wasn’t spicy at all, Madeline really had a hard time eating it — most likely because it had the word “Thai” in the name, and her least favorite meal I make is Pad Thai (after we tried to get her to eat it when it was a little on the spicy side).   I don’t have anything new and exciting on the menu for the rest of this week, but my success with new recipes so far this month is definitely keeping me motivating to look for more new and tasty recipes!