Home for the holidays

The holiday season comes early in the mountains. When we drove into downtown Manitou at 2:30 pm a couple of weeks ago, we saw that the sun had already disappeared behind the mountains for the day, leaving the whole town in shadow. So strange, when you can see the sun still shining brilliantly not only on the peaks overhead but also across the plains to the east. But I could understand why Christmas lights were already up in mid-November.

At the arcade.When you live in a tourist town, you do strange-looking things like this in the off-season.

We did find this little pocket park up one windy side street we'd never taken before. That's the town down below: Three o'clock, all in shadow.

Since I was giving an exam last Wednesay and had to be back in the classroom Monday morning, we couldn't make it to Delaware this year for the classic family Thanksgiving.

So what's the recipe for a great Thanksgiving weekend far from home?

1. Start by trying to make some of the traditional family recipes for yourself. (This was all Tom and the girls.) Get the dishes just right, to your own astonishment and delight.

Alice helps cut out angel biscuits.

2. Order sunny, warm weather and get outside for a walk or two around the neighborhood in the morning to work up an appetite.

Between a rock and a hard place 

3. Accept an invitation to join a crowd of friends (the colleague you do know + many you don't) who have been getting together for Thanksgiving for years. Make sure the host has a friendly nine-year-old daughter who is eager to take two younger girls under her wing to play with her toys, draw pictures, and eat together at dinner. Meet lively, interesting people from other departments and enjoy adult conversation for once.

4. Fearful of three more unprogrammed days in the house with fractious children? Take an overnight getaway to see a new part of the state. Quiz: Look at the picture below and figure out where we're staying (no help from the locals!):

5.  Enjoy a private lesson in animal tracking and then roast s'mores in the fireplace.

Animal-track headbands they stamped after tracking

6. Make sure the snow starts falling as you're playing a Sesame Street board game together as a family.

7. When the majority of the family unaccountably doesn't want to act on Mom's desire to attend the local Christmas lights parade--for some reason rejecting an outdoor parade in 25-degree weather and a driving snow--be flexible, and agree to go swimming instead.

8. Spot either a wolf or a coyote (still not sure which--probably coyote) on your way back to your room.

9. If you're under 18, get totally and completely tickled about staying in a hotel room. Beg to hang out in your pajamas all morning, lolling on the enormous double bed with your sister.



10. Ultimately agree to try some ceramic painting and mosaic craftwork at an excellent & crafts center. Spend all morning working on projects with your family.

11. Head home and gear up for advent!

From the archives

A certain blog reader sent in the image below in response to the last post; it was taken from the family annals, circa 1982. (We figured we could get away with publishing it since Uncle Peter is currently in Antarctica, truly the last place on earth without regular internet access.) Maybe certain tendencies are in the genes--or maybe certain dynamics are just inherent to ages 6 and 3.

The problem, incidentally, was the fish (barely visible in front of the dress), which had ruined the script by biting the wrong line...

Small and mighty

The combination of willpower, imagination, and um, directorial vision issuing from our toddler these days threatens to undo us. As one of my colleagues reported her husband saying, "Why do we continue to feed them and put them to bed on time? It just gives them the resources to come back at us again tomorrow."

It's not all "oppositional" energy, to borrow the word one of Alice's preschool teachers used last week. (The other teacher more bluntly greeted us one morning with the declaration, "She's a lot H-A-R-D-E-R these days.") Some of Alice's efforts are richly imaginative...but exhausting for all that.

A morning last week was typical. I stumbled out of an early shower, hoping to get to my closet to begin dressing without detection, only to find a bright-eyed little person with a determined look sitting outside the shower door on a stepstool that she had  dragged into position, legs crossed as she paged through a small volume on cellular biology.

"We're going to play baby," she announced without fanfare. "You're the baby. Get down on the floor and crawl. You don't know how to walk."

And so the day begins. Every waking moment is a moment in which we're supposed to be taking roles in some imaginary play. Not that I acquiesce to all such demands. But I'm not naturally inclined to power struggles, and even negotiating (or flat-out denying) such demands is exhausting when they come in a steady stream.

The other day I watched our alpha toddler on the playground with a mild-mannered four-year-old friend, literally ordering said friend in a ceaseless march around the play structures for 45 minutes. "Now you climb that tower. No, THAT tower. That's your castle. Wait for me to invite you to my castle. Don't move." Her friend dutifully followed all directions, as I cringed and apologized to the friend's father, who reassured me that his shy daughter seemed to feel comfortable in that role. Maybe, but someone is going to have to put up a fight at some point--I hope. In that hour on the playground I saw the behavior that Alice ideally would like to solicit from all the rest of us; she never stops trying.

So maybe it's time to record some of the funnier moments, for balance.

***

When playing princess, Alice declares that Daddy is "my prince" and so she addresses him. "Come to the ball, my prince."

She has since extended the form of address. We play preschool, and she is the teacher. I raise my hand in Circle Time.

She nods, "Yes, my kid?"

***

Again, we're playing preschool, and Edith is the teacher. She orders the class to start some new activity, and I say I don't want to do it. She puts her hands on her hips.

"This is not a crying or a whining school. Let's go."

***

"Do they have toys in jail?" she asked Tom at dinner yesterday, apropros of nothing. Tom said they do not.

"Yes, they do," she countered.

"How do you know?" I asked "Have you been to jail?"

"No," she responded serenely. "I haven't been to jail. And not to college either."

***

The recent past for Alice is last day. She reminds us that she went to school or we read a certain book "last day." And why not? Maybe she'll start talking about yesternight, too. First thing in the morning, meanwhile, she continues to want greffast.

***

And a couple from sister Edith:

I was leafing through the day's mail and came across a coupon from Gymboree. I commented to Tom that I'd just been solicited to sign a petition to Gymboree, protesting their sale of onesies for infants bearing the slogans "Smart Like Dad" for boys and "Pretty Like Mommy" for girls. 

"That's ridiculous!" exclaimed Edith.

Yes, I agreed, it is.

She nodded. "Infants can't read!"

***

Yesterday Edith told Tom that when she turned four, back in Princeton, she'd thought she would move up to the pre-K class at school immediately, on her birthday. She got to school expecting to join Mr. Allan's class and was told that no, she had to wait until everyone moved up to the next class together in September.

The following spring her younger friend, Serena, turned four. She came running into school on her birthday excited to join Mr. Allan's class.

"So I took her aside," explained Edith, "and said 'Hon, it's not gonna happen. Believe me, I've been there. I made the same mistake as you. Learn from me.'"