Fun in the sun

It was a perfect weekend to be outdoors! Sunny and warm from first to last. Finally the tentative spring blossoms dared to unfurl, and by Sunday many trees were in full bloom that had seemed to stop halfway a couple of weeks ago, as if hesitant to respond to the lengthening light in the face of perpetual cold.

It was thus a bad weekend for taking photos, the bright light causing glare on the one hand and dark shadows on the other. But for what they're worth, here are a few, accompanied by an account of our sunny weekend.

SATURDAY
7:45 - Gretchen leaves home with Campbell, Conrad, and Harrison for a large PTA thrift sale in Lawrenceville. Finds a handful of short-sleeved tops and shorts for Edith...just in time. In a moment of weakness, also purchases a second-hand Fisher Price airport, since Edith has continued to talk enviously about Harrison's trip to the airport, as well as a play dishwasher and sink with several dishes, given Edith's love of the demo kitchen at Pottery Barn Kids. Feels profligate shelling out the extra $9 to bring more plastic toys into our apartment.

8:45 - Edith leaves home with Tom for the ultimate Frisbee fields. Gets into a toddlers' game of Frisbee on the sidelines while Daddy's team plays on the big field.

10 - G, T, and E all meet up at the softball fields for the first Revolting Masses practice of the season. Campbell, dropping Gretchen off at the softball fields, offers to take her purchases home for her, but on instinct Gretchen hangs onto them. Turns out to be exactly the right move: Edith is overcome with wonder and excitement to arrive at the fields and discover herself in new posession of a toy airport and a toy sink. "Mommy got Edith toys!" she kept exclaiming with awed gratitude. And when she saw the airplane, "Like Harry!" Gratitude from a toddler is so immensely...well, gratifying. The airport and the dishwasher kept her busy on the sidelines for over an hour, during which she'd go back and forth from one to the other, whipping up some oatmeal on her new dishes, loading the pilot's suitcase into the plane, moaning from an overload of joy, then going back to the dishes. Nine dollars now seemed like a bargain.

12 - We head home so Tom can shower before heading out to interview a Sudanese refugee for his final project in his Islam class. Gretchen and Edith plan to head to the groundbreaking for the new garden at Forbes College, an opportunity to garden with Edith and to fulfill Gretchen's duties as a Forbes fellow rolled into one. But it proves hard to get out the door again.

1 - We abandon the effort to get to Forbes before naptime, settling instead for reading a book about gardening and watering all the neighbors' flowers downstairs. Edith learns that you can't force the tight green tulip heads open with your hands. "Tulips have [to] open 'self."

1:40 - Gretchen tries to get Edith down for a nap. Mommy desperately needs a nap herself, having stayed up most of the previous night finishing the draft of a paper. Or rather, finishing the draft of the paper by 1am, then trying to shake off the coffee she imprudently accepted for free when Barnes and Noble was closing, forgetting it was Starbucks and thus double or triple the regular strength. Edith, not having had the coffee, is not at all sleepy.

2 - Edith acquiesces to getting in her crib, The Sound of Music on the CD player. Gretchen heads to bed.

2:10 - "Mommy, puppet show! Mommy, PUPPET SHOW!!!" Unfortunately, the portion of the Sound of Music soundtrack that Edith likes is much shorter than Peter and the Wolf, which she enjoys in its entirety. We have persuaded her to let us start the CD several songs before her favorite; she knows she has to "wait [for the] puppet show." The anticipation makes her so excited when it does come on that she wants to share her joy and yells until you come and acknowledge the glorious moment.

2:20 -Maria and Captain Von Trapp are crooning to each other about their miserable childhoods, and Edith is no longer interested. Protest from the crib. Gretchen resets the CD to "Favorite Things" and returns to bed.

2:45 - No dice. Edith is still awake and Maria and Georg are back to musing on the karmic possibility of adult fulfillment in light of sinful youths. Edith is impatient with their inexplicable hang-ups. It looks like there is to be no nap today. We head out to the playground.

5:55 - Daddy shows up, humbled by a four-hour interview with a man who literally escaped from the chopping block. He's a little weary, too, not the least because the man turns out to have been a Roman Catholic, which makes it hard to use his incredible story for a final project on Islam.

6 - We head inside to listen to A Prairie Home Companion's Talented TwentySomthings Competition. We're thrilled when Tom's cousin Ryan is lead singer on the first song performed by the Powder Kegs. Then thrilled again when he gets to be a character in the Guy Noir sequence.

7:47 - The Powder Kegs are declared winners of the contest! By a margin of 16 votes out of 11,000. (Hey, we liked the second-place band, too.) Thanks to all of you who listened and voted...

9:15 - Deciding that a discussion of the Sudanese man's life story is too much for the short remaining time before bed, Gretchen and Tom settle down on the couch for a quick movie instead. It's Ordinary People, part of a catch-up-on-1970s-Oscar-winners segment in Gretchen's Netflix queue.

12:15 - Still awake psychoanalyzing the characters in Ordinary People, then ourselves in light of the characters in Ordinary People.

SUNDAY
8:26 - Lying in bed bathed in warm morning sunshine. Every muscle aches from softball, we still haven't caught up on sleep, and for once in a blue moon Edith is actually asleep in our bed in the morning, rather than tossing, turning, and jumping on us until bed is too miserable a place for us to remain. Do we really have to leave for church in nine minutes?

8:46 - We leave for church. Gretchen is ten minuntes late to choir. Otherwise all goes well.

11:20 - Edith is done with church for the day. Gretchen has already sat through the service once, so she and Edith head outside. Edith tries to water, or rather milk, the pansies. (Linguistic observation: Why does to water X mean to cast water on it but to milk X mean to extract milk from it?) Mommy says no. Edith starts eating pansies. Mommy really means no this time, and we head up the block.


11:30 - The balloon man is out! Edith touches the Elmo balloon, touches the giant duck balloon, laughs at the dog-on-a-leash balloon, boings the spider balloon, then watches a little girl who looks like her twin receive a pink flower balloon and asks for a blue one.


Delighted with her blue balloon, she tells me, "Like Pascal." The Red Balloon is a favorite book these days. Does she recall the page on which Pascal meets a little girl in a white dress with a blue balloon? Then she tells me, "Tough boys come, take Edith's balloon, pop balloon. Like Pascal's balloon." I assure her that no, the tough boys won't come take her balloon. She looks offended. "YES, Mommy." (We have noticed recently that Edith still says yeah for a general affirmative, but a distinct yes when she is contradicting something we've said.) She begins to grow agitated. "Yes, Mommy! Tough boys come pop Edith's balloon!" Apparently Edith wants to live the story, not to protect her balloon. I switch tacks and tell her to keep an eye out for the tough boys, then. Edith is the only person in Princeton who is hoping that the growing Trenton gang violence will spread northward.

Then again, she was something of a little tough herself this weekend, having found the stash of temporary tattoos I'd picked up second-hand to be a special reward at an opportune moment. The opportune moment turns out to be when your child discovers the stash of special rewards and decides to throw a tizzy if she can't have one "right now"! She was very proud of her flower tattoo and showed it off to everyone. Fortunately, we were the only ones who saw her wearing a Pull-up diaper on the outside of her pajama bottoms, so she could admire the picture of Cinderella on the front.


1 - We return home planning to ask our neighbor Laura over for lunch, only to find that the abbreviated walk Bismarck received this morning wasn't enough, especially since something is evidently bothering his all-too-delicate digestive system. Tom declares it Gretchen's job to clean up the mess. No lunch guests with this odor in the house.

2 - Gretchen finally puts away the bleach and sets the sterilized mop out to dry on the porch. She and Edith both lie down for naps.

3:30 - After half a nap, Gretchen and Edith head over to old stomping grounds in the Butler apartment complex to meet up with Gretchen's classmate Jane and her children, Sophia and Zaid, for a mellow afternoon outside. Tom heads to his second softball practice of the weekend, as manager of the new seminary team he's bringing into the university softball league.

Edith was a bit intimidated by Sophia, who is a year older and knows what she wants, but she and Zaid hit it off. She even deigned to let him "swing high little swings, Edith push [from the] back." Edith is usually not one to forego a turn on the swings. Testimony, perhaps, to the power of a sunny weekend outdoors to stimulate a sunny disposition...