Author: brookeshelf

Here’s a parenting Pro Tip: summer swimming lessons are for the birds.

For the last four or so years, we’ve signed our kids up for summer swimming lessons. They flounder a bit at the beginning of summer, but by the time August rolls around, they make a little progress. All this progress is then thrown on the ash heap as soon as the opening bell of school rings. Come next June, they are once again floundering and afraid to blow bubbles in the water.

So, this school year, I decided to bite the big inconvenient bullet and continue to sign my kids up for swimming lessons all year round. And yes, I mean it when I say inconvenient. There’s nothing quite like wrangling a toddler into a swimsuit while simultaneously trying to get dinner on the table so the whole family can be at the pool by 6:30 p.m. (Yes, Katie is in a preschool class, now that she’s three.)

Has it made a difference? Well . . . with some of our kids. And by “some” I mean Eleanor. After repeating the Youth 1 class a few times, she’s finally figured out this swimming concept and is doing backstrokes across the pool in the Youth 3 class. If she keeps this up, she’ll graduate to the fabled Deep End of the Pool in no time.

However, the boys . . . are still stuck in Youth 1. The past few months, they come very close to graduating, but not quite. It’s frustrating. Jeff is far and away the oldest kid in that class, and part of me wonders how much his lack of progress is caused by a personality conflict with his teachers (Jeff spends a lot of class time goofing off).

And, well.  Nobody expects much of anything from Katie. She has no fear of the water, which is why I signed her up for the class in the first place. She’s cute as a button and frequently looks up from the water to wave and say “Hi Mom!” At the end of each class, her teacher gives the preschoolers floatie rings and then makes them into a “caterpillar” and tows them through the pool. It’s ADORABLE.

So there are a few days in March that are worth celebrating for celebration’s sake:

St. Patrick’s Day, where we all wear green and eat corned beef for supper.

Then there is March 14, aka Pi Day (because 3.14) where we eat pie for supper and dessert (chicken and s’mores, respectively) and watch Donald in Mathmagic Land afterwards.

Katie chose the flavor of the dessert pie, can you tell? What toddler could possibly resist something covered with marshmallows and Teddy Grahams? I wanted to take a snapshot of the s’mores pie but the kids kept snatching marshmallows off of the pie.  Cute, right?

Lastly, we celebrated the first day of spring with fresh blintzes. This is inspired by a picture book we love called How Mama Brought the Spring, where a family in Minsk cook blintzes together. Jeff was really involved in making the blintzes this year and helped roll quite a few of them up. They are, I think, the best batch of blintzes we’ve made so far.

 

One of the many things the University of Washington is famous for is its beautiful collection of Japanese cherry trees on the big campus quad. The trees are over 80 years old, and a rare variety in the U.S.  When they bloom in the spring, the UW is bombarded by visitors wanting to see the blossoms.

Last year I foolishly went to see them on a warm Saturday. The crowds were like Disneyland and I was panicked the whole time, worried that my kids would get lost.

This year I was able to see the flowers on a  weekday when the kids had no school. There were still plenty of petal-peepers there, but it wasn’t nearly the same levels of crazy as before.

I love the peaceful sense of communion there.  Everyone on the quad seemed happy and energetic, like we knew we were appreciating something fleeting and wondrous.

Hence my zillion billion photographs. Enjoy.

I tried to get individual portraits of each child as well as some group shots. The results were . . . mixed. It’s really difficult to get Jeff to smile naturally for the camera. The picture below isn’t all that bad.

I LOVE this picture of Katie alone with a tree. Patiently waiting for other pedestrians to pass out of the camera’s frame, while hoping the child will stay in the same spot — good luck. Getting good pictures of children is 90% luck.

Yes, two pictures in a row of Katie running away from the camera. Nice. I love the shape of the branches in the photo below:

“Jeffrey! Look at the camera!  Look over here for just a minute, buddy — look over — look — oh, forget it.”

This one I absolutely love. William had been playing peek-a-boo with Katie to get her to smile. As a result, they were all smiling together.

I promised them that they could take a “silly” picture if they held still for a nice picture. Notice how Jeff looks basically the same.

And this is a picture of one of the beautiful buildings on campus. Eleanor decided to leap in the air, and I managed to click the camera shutter just in time. I really like it in black & white, it shows off the funky shape of her legs.

Back in fall, Katie looked up at our first cloudy gray sky of the season and gasped. “Where did the blue sky go?” she wailed.

You can imagine how pleased she is that the sunshine of springtime is back.

“The clouds have opened up the sky,” she told me. “I am making the sunshine with my eyes!”

Making sunshine with her eyes? I asked her to demonstrate, and she made this face:

Pretty awesome, and one of my favorite Katie-isms. Here are a few more:

“person” = purse

“pillow” = a pill (specifically, a vitamin)

“traintrack” = soundtrack, as in “Can we listen to the Frozen traintrack?” We all call it the “traintrack” now.

“hangabah” = hamburger

“Star Work” = Star Wars (and the characters are referred to as the “Star workers”)

“elliepop” = lollipop

“alligator” = escalator/elevator

“dictionary” = air conditioner. This one too me forever to figure out, with many requests for “turn on the dictionary, I am hot” coming from the backseat of the car

“neck-a-lace” = necklace. Not too difficult to figure out, but I love the extra syllable

“hand nocklers” = making binoculars with her hands. When we drive in the car, she often points things out by saying “Look at that! I can see it with my hand nocklers!”

 

There really isn’t much going on in my life, apparently.  But I am having fun taking pictures that are more interesting and attentive than my usual point-and-hope-for-the-best-shoot.

Once again, a restaurant has excellent lighting for portraits! There’s got to be some kind of restaurant/photography business model in the making there . . .

 

These next two are from a knitting store I love called the Weaving Works. Katie has a little purple skein on her thumb that she called her “plum,” from the Little Jack Horner nursery rhyme. I was charmed that she make the connection, but less so when she threw a fit because I wouldn’t buy the “plum” for her to take home.

 

These next two are from knitting projects. The first is a hat that I made for my sister that turned out waaaaay too big. (Serves me right for not making a gauge swatch first.) The second is a mitten made by — Eleanor! It’s her first knitting project, too. Hopefully I can get her to finish the second one before winter returns.

 

And this is a van I saw in my neighborhood. I have a soft spot for funky van art, and this one’s a beaut.

This spring I, along with three of my best friends, organized a women’s spiritual retreat on the Kitsap peninsula. One of the highlights of the retreat was a photography workshop taught by my friend, Mendy. It’s turned me into quite the shutterbug — although part of my enthusiasm was brought on by a visit from my mother-in-law, Kathryn. It’s so fun to take pictures of her and Katie together!

Here is Katie trying on jewelry at Old Navy:

One of my favorite restaurants, The Cheesemonger’s Table, has excellent light for portraits:

So did the gelato shop up the street — I love the chalkboard wall as a backdrop!

Katie had chocolate gelato, in case you couldn’t guess.

This is a selection of bento boxes we found at a Japanese dollar store.  It took all my will power not to buy one.

 

And this is a rare shot of all four children smiling at the same time.  Nothing fancy, just a small miracle.

 

 

 

 

 

Jeffrey had his very first band concert this week. I’m so proud of him! My eardrums have taken a lot of abuse with our early-morning practice sessions, but it’s been worth it.

The band’s big number was “Let’s Go Band,” a song which the music teacher described as “something they will play every year in band for the next eight years.” True that — even I recognized the melody to this song from high school pep rallies. Apparently, Jeff was the only 5th grader this year who wanted to play percussion, so the music teacher joined him to help out with the bass drum and cymbal.  I love how Jeff danced along with the song. Points for originality, Jeffrey-do!

Meanwhile, Eleanor once again prepared two songs for the Washington state piano adjudications program. It’s been difficult to motivate Eleanor to practice well, so her performance was kind of shaky. In the video below, she’s doing a practice performance at her piano teacher’s house, and the performance is very shaky. She did much better at home, trust me.

Her first piece is “Allegretto,” which was very difficult to learn, since it requires more independent hand movement than anything she’s played before. The second piece is “The Fly’s Adventure,” which she loves playing, fast. It look a lot to rein her in.

I wasn’t able to attend the piano adjudications in person, but Brian told me she did very well. So well, that she got an honorable mention for the Honors performance. Yay!

Hey, look at my garage . . . it looks like Willy Wonka paid a visit, doesn’t it?

For the second year in a row, I am serving as the Cookie Parent for Eleanor’s Girl Scout troop. Once again, it’s been a wild ride. Brian and Eleanor trolled the neighborhood, selling boxes here and there.

I collected all the girls’ orders and sent them into the council. Then the fateful day arrived when I had 40 cases of cookies in my garage and patiently waited for families to come and pick them up.

Meanwhile, Brian and Eleanor tramped around the neighborhood again, making deliveries (Brian is my hero) while I organized the booth sales for the troop.  This is where we schedule girls and adults to sell cookies at a table in front of a grocery store. I had to wake up at the crack of dawn to put in our grocery store location request before they were all gone, then organize parents and kids to staff the tables.  This was tricker than it seems, since families kept changing their minds, and we had specific “safety-wise” parent/kid ratios to keep.

But it all went well, and we sold all our cookies! Eleanor even got to wear the Thin Mint cookie costume, which I thought was adorable.

That said, I am sad to say that we are going to be dropping out of the troop next year. It’s especially difficult for me, since I had agreed to be the troop leader. But when I accepted the job, I didn’t know that all the other leaders would be dropping out . . . and I didn’t know that Brian would be called to be YM president at church. Since I’ve been unable to get any other parents to step forward to co-lead the troop with me, it’s seems like a doomed enterprise. Besides, Eleanor’s extracurricular schedule is starting to wear me down.  Right now, she’s doing creative dance, Seattle Children’s Chorus, swimming lessons, Girl Scouts, Activity Days, sewing lessons, and piano lessons. That’s a lot of carpooling.

Sad, but it’s time to cut back.  She can still be an independent scout and we can go to mother/daughter camp together and work on badges. It’s probably the only one of her activities we can go solo with, to tell the truth. It was a wonderful thing to have the troop experience, but it’s time for a change.

We didn’t go anywhere for midwinter break this year, so I spent time collecting images of silly children.

Such as: Katie’s amazing snow-day ensemble. Minnie Mouse dress, puff coat, mismatched flip-flops. Classic toddler attire.

Or the amazing kid stack!

Jeff and Wim have recently re-ignited their interest in Pokemon and love to collect the cards. I don’t think they really know the real rules to the game. They just make up their own and spend hours discussing the game, carefully spreading cards all over the dining room table.

We all know the most important part of Valentine’s Day, right?

And if your answer is “Competitive Box Decorating,” you’d be in total agreement with my boys.

The entire 5th and 6th grades at school were in on the competition to create the best Valentine’s box. Jeff and Brian worked together to create this lil’ number:

“I painted all the blood,” said Jeffrey. It paid off, because he won 2nd place, and received a gift certificate to Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt as a prize, which he promptly traded for Pokemon cards. (“They were really good Pokemon cards,” he explained.)

William’s class didn’t have a competition, but he insisted on making this Pikmin box. The pikmin “has his head down inside of the hole,” according to Wim, and there are lots of little footprints painted all over the top.

Mr. Wim was especially into Valentine’s Day this year. He went to each member of the family, asked them what their favorite color was, and then closed himself in the craft room for a while. That evening, we all found construction paper hearts in the color of our choice, nestled on our pillows.

At the end of the project, William made one more heart, featuring everyone’s favorite colors. It’s been hanging on the kitchen window ever since.

Yes, I’ll admit that this show of holiday enthusiasm was contagious. I decided to have a repeat of the “fancy meal” we celebrated last year, courtesy once more of the delightful frozen food aisle at Trader Joe’s. (Between extracurricular activities and Jeff’s need for hands-on homework coaching, almost every dinner is brought to us by the frozen food aisle these days.  Sigh.) The kids loved having permission to use the good plates, stemmed glasses, and lit candles. Mmmm, bubbly apple cider, the best!

But despite my enthusiasm for frozen chow, I did want to make a really good homemade cake for dessert. It was so refreshing to put a pause on everything else in my life and devote some time to baking, especially when it’s from my favorite baking book, Rose’s Heavenly Cakes. The “Double Chocolate Valentine” is a heart-shaped velvety chocolate cake that you poke holes in after baking and soak in chocolate ganache. When it’s time to eat it, you carefully place a layer of raspberries on top and spread on some melted seedless jelly for a glaze. It’s really way easier than it looks, so long as you have a heart-shaped pan.

Mmmmm, makes me want to devote more holidays to cake baking, definitely.