The Adventures Continue!

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The day after Wimmy celebrated his spiffing first birthday, he woke up with a series of big red spots all over his face, arms, and legs.

Allergies? Bug bites? Chicken Pox?

CHICKEN POX?

We still don’t know — they’re fading slowly away, and didn’t seem to bother him — but we are pleased to say that the event has inspired yet another title in the growing catalog of “Jack Norris” imaginary novels.

Didja miss the original “Jack Norris” explanation? Go back here and check it out. Since Jeffrey bestowed this strange little moniker on his baby brother, we’ve been collecting titles in the series based on events in William’s life. The concept is that it’s an action/spy series of novels, a la James Bond or — dare we presume to aspire to it — Christopher Cool, TEEN AGENT.*

So, the “chicken pox” have been labeled as The Enigmatic Spots of Jack Norris!

Watching William slowly reach up from his car seat to grab a cracker:

The Floating Hand of Jack Norris!

In Which William Tosses a Rubber Duckie Into His Father’s Bath:

The Mysterious Duck of Jack Norris!

Remember how Wimmy got a toy wolf puppet at Yellowstone? And it always managed to wind up in the small of his back?

The Vanishing Wolf of Jack Norris!

After trying to feed William while he sleepily pushed everything away, my sister-in-law also contributed

The Creeping Ennui of Jack Norris!

Although really — does this match the Super Secret Spy Agent-type nonstop action that readers have come to expect when picking up a Jack Norris title? I’m not sure. Perhaps this volume comes late in the series, when Jack Norris has retired from the international intrigue business and is coping with boredom on his island villa.

Just one more thing — if you haven’t seen the gorgeous cover art Penguin has commissioned for its reissues of the James Bond novels, GO SEE THEM NOW. They are groovaliciously AWESOME.

*Oh yes, it exists. Go over to Fuse #8 and read the full description of this luscious series. Should I mention that the books include a sassy redheaded “co-ed” whose name is Spice Carter?

Happy Birthday Wimmykins!

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He’s one year old today!

The funny thing is, I was happy that his birthday was in late July, so it wouldn’t ever conflict with major holidays.

BUT — then we moved to Utah, which celebrates Pioneer Day on the 24th.  Oh, well.  At least there will always be parades and rodeos to see on his birthday.  In fact, Jeffrey and Eleanor already participated in a neighborhood ’round-the-block children’s parade this morning.  Their impromptu pioneer costumes were cuuuuute.

I’ve make chocolate sour-cream cupcakes, and he will be given one to devour all by himself.  Friends of ours from Pittsburgh are coming over for a party (we are currently at Brian’s parents’ house).  A candle will be lit.  Bubbles will be blown.  A big ol’ pile of presents will be unwrapped.

It’ll be the greatest birthday he’ll never remember.

To See What He Could See

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Wow!

I actually survived staying in a camping trailer with two kids, a baby, my parents and 13-year-old brother!  While the trip to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons was very fun, it was nice to get home (my parents spent the entire trip looking concerned and saying, “Brooke, I hope you’re having fun,” and I spent the entire time looking concerned and saying “Mom, I hope we aren’t ruining your trip”).

But it WAS fun.  Jeffrey joined the Yellowstone Junior Rangers and took his duties VERY seriously (his application said “I want to help make the park a perfect home for animals”).  When he earned his official Junior Ranger Patch he insisted on carrying it around in his pocket for the rest of the day.

His favorite part of the trip was swimming in the Firehole River and the String Lake.  Everything with him was cool once we convinced him that a bear wasn’t going to jump on him the second he stepped outside.  (Darn those “Camper Beware” signs with photos of bears invading tents!  Don’t they know that paranoid five-year-olds are going to see them?)

Jeff also acquired a coonskin cap, which he wore while strutting around shirtless.  Oh, he was also wearing this cheesy leather ‘n’ lanyard “medicine bag” he got at the Shoshone museum in Colter Bay (which I had to lace together for him, arrgh).  All in all, he looked like a kid who went off to Camp Gowanagin, circa 1952.

Eleanor spent a good portion of the trip in a sparkly green and pink “Ranger Girl” t-shirt, and kept a ladybug flashlight in her pocket.  She was a little too frightened of the lake and river for much swimming, but she loved hiking, getting shoulder rides from Grandpa, and sharing a bunk bed with Jeffrey.

William, owing to our cramped living space, didn’t get much crawl-around time, but I did let him play in the dirt quite a bit, which he LOVED LOVED LOVED.  Oh, the love affair with Le Dirt: it starts young don’t it?  His main souvenir was a Folkmanis wolf finger puppet.  He loves to give it “loveys” and chew its tail.  Kicking his feet in the Firehole River was also a plus.

Okay, now for the vital stats of the trip.  You ready?

Wildlife sighted:

  • Osprey
  • Elk
  • Bison (including two juveniles butting heads)
  • Coyote (it was lounging under a tree and flicking its big ears at us)
  • BEAR!!

It was right off the side of the road! I haven’t seen a bear that close in the park since forever.  My dad teased my mom by pretending to want to get out of the car and “get a closer look.”  She totally fell for it and freaked out.  Ah, Mom and Dad: some things never change.

Things we saw fall in the hot pots:

  • two hats
  • an umbrella

Yeah, it was a windy day.

Number of states whose license plates we saw during our four-day trip:

  • ALL FIFTY!

Yes, EVEN Maine and EVEN Hawaii.  BOO-YAH, BABY!

That was pretty much my proudest accomplishment during the trip, other than the ol’ “nobody died” thing.

‘Cause, y’know.  Fifty states.  That’s a lot to keep track of.

The Bear Went Over the Mountain

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The kids and I are heading up to Yellowstone Park with my parents and brother, so I won’t be posting much over the next few days.  Brian, poor guy, has to stay behind and go to work — but on the other hand, he gets to go to The Police reunion concert in Salt Lake.

This, as a non-Sting fan, does not seem to be much of a perk to me.  In fact, I’d like to take a good fist-to-the-eye of whoever it was that wrote “Message in a Bottle.”  But I’m sure he’ll have fun.

And so will we!  Assuming, of course, that nobody is boiled alive!  Or trampled by a moose!  Hurrah!

sun moon stars rain

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Fantasy vs. Reality!

This has been one of my parenting challenges, as of late. You see, sometimes kids come to you to ask how certain things work (“Why does Dad have to go to work?” “Why do we keep the milk in the fridge?”) and other times they make little theories all on their own.

For instance, this past Fourth of July, Jeffrey was literally hopping with excitement over the fireworks display. (Ella cowered under a blanket during the whole affair, alas.) After enthusiastically joining in the show with his own rocket noises, he turned to me with a serious expression.

“Mom, are fireworks how new stars are made?”

Now, here’s the dilemma: I could correct him, tell him no, stars are born in big glowing gas clouds far out in space. But whenever I do this, I always feel as if the All Powerful Grown-Up Perspective were clamping down its big iron fist on the little flowering Kid View.  There seems no better way to quash a kid’s imagination than to negate it at every turn.  Who says that my world view is all that more valid, anyway?

“Um,” I answer.  “What do you think, Jeff?”

“I think they do,” he says, his grin lit up with sparks.

“Oh?” I ask.  “Just how do they get stuck up there?”

“Well. . . ” he replies, and he then launches into a lengthy explanation that I couldn’t understand very well, except for this bit at the end: “And then all the stars get together around the firework, and use their gravity to swing the new star up into the sky.”  Having finished this little lecture, he then recommenced his tribal firework dance.

I remember a literature prof in college talking about William Blake’s “visionary gleams” — how as a child he would claim to have seen angels sitting in trees, or walking among field laborers.  But his visions continued into adulthood — even at the age of fifty, he claimed to see the rising sun as “an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty.”

Blake knew he was looking at the sun, my teacher explained.  But he was always celebrating the power of the human imagination to superimpose itself onto the world, to see what is there and see what is not.  This is an essential creative power, this ability to create stories, to make worlds.  To see angels in the sun, and stars in a flash of gunpowder.

One Month Later . . .

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So.  We’ve been in Utah for a month, and we STILL haven’t been able to move into our new house.

For those of you who haven’t heard the spiel, we are going to be living in Brian’s grandmother’s house, which is in a great neighborhood close to the university.  The only caveat is that it hasn’t been touched up or whatnot since about 1973 (yellow shag carpet!  avocado appliances!  silver-and-hot-pink flower wallpaper! macrame plant holders!).  Therefore we and my in-laws have been embarking on that most treasured of American pastimes, remodeling.

The theory was that it would all be finished by mid-July, but here we are on 7/12 and the house still has no stairs.

That’s right, no stairs, just a rickety frame of slats to get you from upstairs to down.  According to Ye Olde Contractor Lore, the stairs are traditionally the last thing to be built.  (Why?  Whyyy?  WHYYYY?)  Meanwhile, I feel as if my brain is moving through a fog of paint chips, molding strips, and carpet samples.  Auugh.

Where are we now?  In jolly old West Point, also known as the tiny town where my parents live, also known as Suburban Purgatory.  There isn’t much here besides llama farms and a Wal-Mart.  Ten years ago when my parents first moved here, there was no Wal-Mart.  The arrival of the Wal-Mart was a big deal.  Sigh.

You’ll note the charming image of the city hall at the top of this posting.  They built that thing a couple of years ago and are so proud of the clock tower that it appears on the front page of the town website twice.  Like: “hey, look at what an up-and-coming town we are!  We have a clock tower!”

Oh, I shouldn’t be so negative (although I should note that the original name for the town of West Point was “Muskrat Springs”).  We got to see the adorable local 4th-of-July parade (Ella was extra cute when it came to waving at the people on the floats and scored beaucoup candy and a Frisbee, while Jeffrey rode in a truck in the parade with my dad and threw Tootsie-Rolls at the crowd).  I’ve discovered that there’s a rather awesome donut shop just up the road (double fudge cake doughnuts, swoon).  There’s a playground just behind my parent’s house, and on the odd day when Brian is around in the evening, we pile the kids in the car, swing through Arctic Circle for vanilla cones, and then drive out to Antelope Island to watch the sunset.

Plus, it’s always great to see your kids forming that primeval bond with their grandparents.  Hurrah for the grandmas and grandpas, for they doth rock my preschoolers’ worlds.

Off We Go!

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Today is the day we pack up and drive out West to Salt Lake City. It’s sad to leave Pittsburgh, which has been our family’s home for seven years.

Our children haven’t known any other home but this one!

Okay, okay . . . can’t think about it too much, or I’ll start crying so hard that my tears will short out the keyboard. Let’s look on the Bright Side! Like this:

This is a bag of my Summer Reading. The game I’m playing is that I can only read adult fiction (which I like to do in summer, to get a break from the kidlit, excellent though it may be), and that I couldn’t spend more than $15 on the books. So, yeah — all of these books, which are in excellent condition, were found at book sales and such for next to nothing. Most of them haven’t even been read. Thank you, Oprah, award committees, and bestseller lists — for making wealthy people who have no reading time buy books, and them immediately give them to thrift stores and library book sales. The impoverished bibliophiles of the world salute you!

Well . . . the books inside the bag are part of this game. Road Trip USA and Princess Ben were purchased new. We need the road trip book to find out where the best patty melts are on the road, and I’m planning to read Princess Ben to Brian on the trip.

The picture’s awfully blurry, ain’t it?  Here’s what’s in the bag:

  • Several magazines
  • Middlesex
  • Cold Mountain
  • Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
  • Naked
  • Me Talk Pretty One Day — I’ve actually read this before, but Brian hasn’t
  • Straight Man
  • Possession
  • The Glass Castle
  • The Jane Austen Book Club

Unread bestsellers, every one.  Think that’ll last me for the weeks until I can get moved in and shimmy up a new library card?  It’ll be about a month or two before that happens (oog.  How will I survive?!?).

I won’t be able to post for a while.  We’ll be staying with my parents for a few weeks while some work is done on our new house, and time online will be parceled out between me and my 13-year-old brother (siiiiiighhhhh). Love that guy, but it’s hard to get him off the ‘puter.  There are more “Remembering Pittsburgh” posts in the works, as well as a great story about how Jeffrey’s been begging to convert to Catholocism.  Confused?  Intrigued?  Stay tuned.

Ta!

Loving & Leaving Pittsburgh: Squirrel Hill

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Squirrel Hill is my ‘hood.  Technically I don’t live in Squirrel Hill (I’m not saying where), but it’s definitely my favorite of the thirty-odd neighborhoods in the city of Pittsburgh.

I love the corner of Forbes & Murray . . .

. . . The JCC and its funky Hebrew-numeral clock . . .

. . . Little’s Shoes!  With its fabulous retro-everything!  I mean, they still hire people to hand-paint their sale signs.

S.W. Randalls is a wonderful little toy store.  We are sad that we won’t be around long enough to enter the Lego contest this year.

No trip up Murray is complete without a visit to Dozen Cupcakes.  Man, we are SO ADDICTED to these things!  I love the cute window display . . .

. . . and Jeffrey loves the cute cupcake display.

Kazansky’s is where we go when we need a good Reuben fix.

Oh, there’s too many other favorite places!  Rita’s Italian Ices (love that mango), Games Unlimited (and its curiously eccentric staff), the Tango Café, Aladdin’s (with its sumptuous dessert case and excellent falafel), Forward Lanes (the only bowling alley I know that’s on the second floor of a building), The 61-C (named after a popular bus line), Knit One (keeps me in with the yarn ladies) –oh, I can’t name them all, but I’ll certainly miss them.

Loving & Leaving Pittsburgh: CLP

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I quit my job last week.

I’ve worked as a page, and then as a clerk, and then finally as a librarian for the Children’s Department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.  For seven years.  And then I had to say good-bye.

I was planning to write this amazing “behind the scenes” tour of the library, including the secret tunnels and overlooked doors that only we librarians know about, but instead, I decided to take a series of photos showing how gorgeous the building is.  Seriously, I love it.  It’s the kind of library I’ve always wanted to work for.

These first two are architectural details of the front door.

This next one is of the lantern in the front foyer, just before you enter the lobby.  There are four tiny lion’s heads on it, but I don’t know if you can tell from this image.

I especially love the grand stairwells, even though I hardly used them – it’s much faster to take the staff elevators.  You can’t see it, but the steps of the marble staircase are gently scooped after so many feet going up and down.

After going through the lobby, you turn down towards the Children’s Department . . .

Here is the main fiction room.  Brian and Eleanor are experimenting with this “My Storyteller” thing that some CMU students built.

And here’s the picture book area.  Everybody loves to see Mary Anne (from Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel).

Lastly, here is a section of the beautiful “Storyteller” mural we have in the Non-Fiction room.  I used to be in charge of shelf-reading that room, so I’ve always had a bit of affection for it.

Loving & Leaving Pittsburgh: Schenley Park

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One of the great things about Pittsburgh is its long history of eccentric millionaires who donated large swathes of land to the city for parks just to tick of their families.

Thanks, Mary Schenley, for deciding to get even with your dad! Now we all have a great big park to run around in!

The paths were originally meant for horse-drawn carriages to go down, so they are wide and graveled — perfect for strollers.

I absolutely adore this park — we call it our “enchanted forest.”  It’s so lush and green.

The paths and hidden staircases spiral downwards into a series of ravines.  Panther Hollow is at the bottom, where there is a duck pond.  We always like to bring bread for them to eat.

Years ago, there used to be a boating house here, but now the only boats on the pond are toy ones.  Jeffrey likes to make little leaf boats and float clovers on top.

On the other side of the forest is the Bartlett Playground, which is our Playground of Choice.  There are rarely any weird people hanging out in this park, and it’s easy to see the whole area from any of the benches.  Ella and Wimmy are obsessed with the swings.

On the slope that leads to the forest is Wildflower Hill.  A crop of daisies just came into bloom this month.  Jeffrey had fun frolicking about.

Oh, I’ll miss zooming in and around this forest!