Boston, Part 1

We're just returned from a wonderful week in Boston, where we reconnected with friends from our days living there and with my family at the annual GOB*Fest (*Gathering of Bogers), which we were attending for the first time. It was good to catch up with everyone after the blur of of baby/toddler years when we traveled little, and the Rocky Mountain interlude, when we couldn't easily get back east. It made us feel reconnected...while also prompting us to talk intently about what we might look for in a house or neighborhood if and when we (like our friends and relatives) ever become real grownups. Will post pictures bit by bit.

Stop #1, Yale, for lunch at Atticus and a quick swing in the JE courtyard.

Although five years ago at reunions Edith pledged her loyalty to Cornell, she had a change of heart after seeing Jonathan Edwards College and Old Campus. She thought the "castles" were beautiful and began to muse on attending Yale and Cornell simultaneously, commuting by plane.

Incidentally, Harry Potter has made it so much easier to explain the residential college system. It was intuitive to Edith and Alice...except for the fact that the location of all colleges' common rooms was public knowledge.

In Boston, we stayed first with one of my roommates from those residential college days, Lina, and her family. Edith and Alice got along beautifully with Elan (7) and Ariel (5), whether blueberry picking, finding their way through a hedge maze, or stealing downstairs before dawn to watch cartoons together.

 

Marble jar

We've never been parents who set up elaborate household systems for motivating or organizing our children. Although I've been impressed by others' chore charts and anger management wheels, we've always been too lazy, or too rushed, or insufficiently confident that they would work to implement such systems ourselves. We did have a sticker chart for Edith when she weaned, but I suspect that the weaning happened because she was ready more so than in response to the daily sticker, since we found ourselves having to remind her about it.

Therefore I've been astonished and gratified that my off-hand suggestion to Alice the other day, that we have a marble jar, is working wonders around our house. She was begging for canvas on which to paint, like her sister, who received canvases as a special Christmas present. Alice has been rather greedy for stuff lately, and I put her off by suggesting that she could earn canvas as a special reward for good behavior, which we could track with a marble jar system. She was amenable to the idea.

So I found a jar, and I explained that she will earn marbles at my discretion for behaviors we've been emphasizing. High on the list are putting her shoes on the shoe rack, putting away her clothes at day's end, repeating a request once rather than incessantly until it is fulfilled, and saying, "Please would you...?" rather than "I want...!" She also earns marbles for trying new foods and for proceeding rapidly through transitions, like getting her shoes on, getting out the door and onto the elevator, and climbing into her carseat, all of which traditionally have been stall-out moments. Conversely, she can lose marbles for dawdling, tantruming, fighting with her sister, or refusing to wear shoes because hers don't look exactly like Mommy's.

The marble jar is still far from full after two weeks, but its very existence has prompted a sea change. The linguistic switch to "Please would you...?" has been almost instantaneous, and when she forgets, she usually self-corrects. She almost always puts her shoes away when she comes in the door. She has tried a couple of new food items, including an unfamiliar dish prepared by a stranger who was standing over her urging her eat, which once would have been a recipe for a tantrum. Transitions still seem to take an awfully long time, but the fear of losing marbles leads to immediate, vociferous apologies when she's mean to her sister.

As an experiment, we've tried roping Edith into the marble system, in order to encourage her to put away her shoes and clothes and sample new foods as well. Edith was open to the idea, and we argued to Alice that this should help her fill the jar faster. We figured it would also encourage yet further sisterly cooperation.

But while four may be the sweet spot for marble jars, eight may be beyond them. After Edith left her sneakers lying in the middle of the floor two days in a row and was called out on it, she responded, "Oh, whoops! I'm sorry, Mom. Please take away a marble." Then she went back to her book, while Alice's eyes got big, and she looked at me as though tragedy had struck.

This may be why I was slow to implement reward systems in the past. You have to hit your audience at just the right moment with just the right incentive. We'll work the marble jar magic hard while we can.

Eight is great

I'm falling in love with age eight.

It snuck up on us, but 8 seems to be the age of quintessential, iconic kid-dom. This summer, Edith seems to me to have entered the stage people imagine when they think generically of "kids." In no way a "little" any more, neither a pre-something. The age of kids on a Lands' End catalog, the age for which "family movies" are written, the age of protagonists in children's adventure books.

Edith has shot up several inches and gotten solid, by which I don't mean fat but no longer in any way delicately small. Close family and friends recently have failed to recognize her from a distance. The same transformation happened to her classmates, as one can see in studying the class picture of little girls from last fall compared to the large, confident, active kids who bounded into a birthday party in June.

Eight is a great age.

Eight pursues its own passions. It finds fiction based on its own interests, series unknown to its parents that are nevertheless well-written, elaborate, imaginative and challenging literature....and swallows them up, hour after hour, book after book, all summer long.

Eight starts to be real friends with little sister, albeit in fits and starts. It is happy to attend daycamp with sister and happier when they're in the same mixed-age group. It sings camp songs with sister and discusses the day with her in the car on the way home.

Eight disappears one evening during a company dinner into the other room, where it starts a Monopoly game (having played once before) and teaches little sister the rules. It is patient in laying out the options every step of the way. Little sister is thrilled to be treated like a big kid and responds well. But when she tires of the game, Eight continues to play both hands itself, cheerfully, for two days--every now and then checking in with little sister, who has long since lost interest, to get approval for a major purchase.

Eight balks at doing daily math work during the summer, but at bottom she knows she should, and I think she's glad her parents are holding her feet to the fire. Even when she complains, she winds up completing the task. She seems to have internalized the sense that it's important.

Eight can beat the pants off three generations, not to mention cultures from around the world, in Wise and Otherwise, the Balderdash-style game of false proverbs. Her language is spot on, and her wisdom is often greater than in the actual sayings. I've started collecting hers.

Eight has accumulated insight on daily life as well. For example, "Chocolate is good, but it's messy. You have to learn to take control of it, like ice cream, and not let it take control of you." (Note that this bit of wisdom was offered yesterday in 95-degree weather. Note also that after some 7 years of my liberally quoting Edith on the blog, this was the first time she looked over my shoulder and made sure I got her original words exactly right, editing down to the letter.)

Eight decides to write a novel, then asks if there's something shorter, and settles confidently on a novella. She has no idea what it will be about.

***

It strikes me that this type of kid-ness, though casually associated with all childhood, is in fact fleeting. I suspect it may last four years? We'll try to enjoy every minute.

Yankee agitators

Protest #1, on Mor-mor and Grandpa's back porch:

Protest #2, at the State Capitol:

About what? Sadly, you can pick your issue, as attested in today's lead op-ed in the New York Times, "The Decline of North Carolina." To those of you who dismiss every place south of the Mason-Dixon line as equally backwards, I should explain that North Carolinians understood themselves differently. I don't mean to whitewash the state's undeniable Confederate, segregationist history. On the other hand, North Carolina was the last southern state to secede and throughout the war had a strong core of Union sympathizers among its small farmers. A century later it was the state that gave birth to the lunch counter sit-ins that helped launch the civil rights movements. Historian William Chafe wrote Civilities and Civil Rights about that era, arguing that North Carolina had a tradition of relative tolerance and moderation compared to its neighbors and that that tradition was significant to its post-WWII trajectory. In the last quarter-century it has attracted thousands of Northeastern transplants of lefty persuasion (my family included). And it has long been known for a progressive tradition in higher education.

Now the legislature seems determined to reverse all that.

Edith liked being an activist. I figured it could go either way -- she might be overwhelmed by the noise and frightened by the tone of the chants, or (as proved to be the case) she might relish being part of a group of people collectively facing down injustice and anxiety. Fortunately, Edith saw the benefits of channeling all her own anxieties about bad guys into collective action. We assured her she could make a lifetime's work out of it.

Recent doings

Having succeeded with a washcloth for teacher's new baby in kindergarten, Edith and I decided to give her second-grade teacher, who similarly went out on maternity leave this year, a set of three washcloths for her three children. Mrs. D. told a number of stories about how her different children's personalities came out in the bath. Edith had empathy for Sam, the eldest, who apparently fears sea monsters in the tub; swimming lessons were a trial for Edith this year, as she dodged the invisible sharks in the school pool. So she made a tag for each washcloth in her best new cursive, and on Sam's she added a note saying it had been sprayed with sea monster repellent so nothing could get him in the bath. Mrs. D. apparently cried when she read it and later told me it was the most thoughtful end-of-year gift she'd gotten in seven years teaching.

Final day of gymnastics class

A biking fool

Edith and Alice in their private library for the summer (Lower School)

 A princess in her castle garden

We lost a beloved copper beech that was rotting from within (seen from the porch, still standing, below). The night before it was cut down, the girls went out and shouted evacuation notices to all the birds and squirrels in the branches.

 

 On the sidewalk in Princeton, Alice converses with Cornelank West and Albert Edithstein

For some reason the light and everyone's mood wound up just right for photos as we were unloading groceries the other day