Summer fun – outdoor movies and a zoo visit

June 25, 2017 / davamarie / Leave a comment

Nothing too profound today (although I’ve been doing a lot more thinking about kids and gender norms lately, so there may be a part 2 to this post coming up soon). I just want to log a little bit of summer weekend family fun.

We kicked things off on Friday evening by heading to a movie in a nearby park. Our first experience with an outdoor movie (actually, I think it may have been our first experience taking any of the kids to any movie ever) was this one last summer. Jonah asked if this one was going to be shown on a barn, a sensible conclusion for a four-year-old, but it actually took place at a park we’d never been to that was less than a mile from our house. We arrived at about 7:45, having stopped for candy and brought some popcorn from home, and got settled on our blanket. There was a playground nearby so we spent some time there, and by about 9:00 I was starting to get very grouchy and impatient. I know that Michigan is on the other end of the time zone from New York, but somehow I expected the parks department to have a projector that’s capable of operating in some daylight. But then the fireflies came out, and the kids all ran towards them.

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At first I caught and handed them fireflies, but before long they’d all caught their very own first fireflies (confession: I actually grew up calling them lightning bugs, but fireflies sounded better in the blog title, so now I go back and forth). They were all SO proud and Jude and Jonah even ran over to Kristin on the blanket to show her.

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I think that I may have seen Jude and Vivi give theirs kisses. Everything about it was adorable. And just to add to the sweetness, there was an older boy there (maybe a few years older than Jonah) who caught them just to hand them to the little kids repeatedly. It was darling.

Then the movie started and by some magic, everyone stayed awake and no one got cranky! Jude and Vivi were fast asleep at the movie last summer, and despite this one ending at nearly midnight they made it all the way through.

On Saturday we’d decided that we would check out the Binder Park Zoo. I hadn’t been in decades, and we had low expectations. We know that we were spoiled by the Bronx Zoo, and a friend warned us that Binder Park really ought to be called, “Trails, With Animals” because mostly it’s just a boatload of walking with periodic animal exhibits. It was more or less what I expected, but the kids had fun.

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See that photo above. That’s what happens when you really want to be in a picture with the kids for once, but two out of three are trying to get away and would rather be doing anything else but that. Thanks guys.

More than anything else, the kids were into the train ride and everything that was climbable. We asked Vivi later that evening what her favorite animal had been and she said, “the choo choo train”.

They all seemed to enjoy the children’s zoo, and Vivi really loved the goats until she got nibbled.

On Sunday we mostly hung out at home because the kids’ exhaustion seemed to have finally caught up with them (midnight bedtime Friday and nothing but car naps on Saturday? I can’t imagine why) and they were crabby, but when I came home from a grocery run with Jonah, Kristin and the twins were in the front yard with the gator and shortly thereafter the neighbors across the street invited us over the blow bubbles. It was a lovely way to end the weekend.

The long-awaited swing set!

June 13, 2017July 22, 2017 / davamarie / 1 Comment

We have been talking to the kids about the possibility of a treehouse / fort / swing set for what feels like forever. Before we ever found a house, Papa Doc had promised Jonah that he would build him a treehouse in our future yard. Of course we didn’t know whether or not we’d end up with a yard that had a suitable tree for an actual tree house (we didn’t) but Kristin and I always had a good-sized yard for play on our wish list, so I was sure we’d have room for something fun. I’ve been dreaming about having a space for outdoor living for ages, so I’ve been pretty motivated to make it special. (Gardening is another thing altogether; we’ve pretty much ignored the actual plants so far, but one of these days we’ll learn how to take that on too). My dad built us an incredible play house on stilts when my sister and I were kids, so I knew what he was capable of.

I probably looked at hundreds of different treehouse kits online, trying to figure out which features I wanted ours to have, how large it should be, how sturdy one brand was compared to another. It was honestly really tough to tell one from the next with only photos and a few specs listed. A friend of mine from work had purchased one that he was happy with and recommended a blog post with a feature and buying guide. While I’m sure they aren’t the ultimate authority on swing sets, it was actually really helpful to consider their advice. I knew that I wanted swings, a slide, a large deck or fort (not just enough room to get on a slide, but plenty of room to hang out and play), and preferably a rope ladder or climbing wall, it narrowed my search. It didn’t take me long to figure out that if we wanted something high-quality it was going to cost close to $2000 (and you can easily spend far more than that if you get carried away). We don’t have that kind of a budget since we have three kids in full-time preschool, so we needed an alternative.

Fortunately, we happened to drop by a friend’s house on a neighborhood walk one weekend and the kids ran into the backyard when we stopped in the driveway to chat with the dad. When we went back there to retrieve them we saw their swing set, and it was great! I asked about it and found out that they’d purchased the plans and the hardware, bought the wood separately (from a provided lumber list) and DIY’d it. They even had their plans around the house so they offered to share them with us. After giving it some thought, I decided that I wanted to go with a slightly different version of the same set (the Trailblazer) because it had a 6’x6′ deck and all of the other features I was looking for. I ran the idea past my dad (who would be doing all of the work, so he had to be on board). He gave it a thumbs-up, so we went for it.

I didn’t have much of a sense of how long this would take; I’d read that even the kits can take roughly 20-25 hours for two adults to assemble. My dad brought over sawhorses, a table saw, a drill (although he ended up borrowing an impact driver from a friend, and said it made a huge difference), and probably a few other tools I’m forgetting, and set up shop in our garage. He had a trailer full of lumber delivered by a handyman friend who he trusted to pick out good wood (we used pressure treated pine), and went to work last week Tuesday.

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I’m not at all surprised by his handiness, but I’m honestly amazed by how quickly he put this together given all of the other estimates I’d read for a variety of sets. It took him less than a week of some partial and some full days, he estimates around 20 hours or so. On the first day, he asked me if Jonah might like to help him for a bit (he’d been talking about helping Papa Doc on this project for a long time) so I went to pick him up from preschool an hour early. He immediately ran down to the basement to get his toolbox.

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My dad let him ratchet in a bolt or two, but he lost interest pretty quickly and decided to just watch. The next day, when the kids came home from school the platform was up. Every day they’d run back there first thing to see what new progress had been made, and immediately climb on whatever was there. I should mention that it was probably key to progress that he worked on it almost exclusively while they were away at school. The interference and insistence on toddlers “helping” would have slowed things considerably.

The swing beam and swings went up next, which was very exciting, along with the tarp for the roof. The angle on the a-frame for the swing beam is really wide, which bothers my dad a little bit visually, but it makes it ridiculously sturdy. Had he cut the beams shorter they could have sat at a narrower angle, but honestly I love how sturdy it is. You can set a glass of wine on the cross beam while the kids are swinging and it doesn’t even wobble (yes, I’ve tested this). My dad pointed out that this thing is WAY overbuilt. Literally anyone could climb all over this thing and it wouldn’t move.

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Next came the slide, which wasn’t included with the hardware kit so we were able to choose it. I wanted one with a weight limit that could handle adults as well because I wanted it to be good and sturdy, and we found this one at our local Home Depot. You need a 10′ slide for a 5′ platform, and fortunately it fit in my parents’ Four Runner. My dad showed up with the slide on a weekend morning, so all of the kids were there to watch him install it.

I have to say that it does get really hot in the sun, so we may be hosing it down a bit this summer. Fortunately we have a shady yard and the set is almost entirely in the shade for most of the day.

The last item on the list was the cargo net, and that went in yesterday (not quite a week from when he started). When the kids came home from school they all fought to climb on it first.

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Oh, and there’s also a hammock! You can see it behind the fort in the photo above. That was only a partial impulse buy at Target this past weekend. We’d talked about trying to attach a hammock to the set somehow but hadn’t quite figured it out. I looked at kid-sized hammocks on Etsy but they were surprisingly pricey for a tiny hammock, but then I happened upon these $19 nylon hammocks in the seasonal section and grabbed one, figuring we’d see if we could make it work. My dad put a hook into one of the posts and attached the other end to the fence and that was it (along with a couple of carabiners and some cute yellow chain for length). It just happened to be the perfect distance from the fence.

The kids are so in love with all of this. Every morning when they wake up they ask go outside before anything else, and at the end of the evening it’s tough to pull them away to get them into bed.

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On this week leading up to Father’s Day I couldn’t be more thankful for my dad, our loving, handy Papa Doc who put so much sweat and love into making the yard special for the kids. The final step is to get sand into the sandbox under the fort. It’s arriving on Friday; thirty six 50-pound bags to be exact. I still have some grass to dig out, and we considered making it twice as deep, but once we realized how much sand we would need I decided to leave it as-is and see if it suffices.

Here’s how the total budget shook out:

Plans and hardware (including swings, cargo net, and tarp): $399
Lumber: $280 (which is WAY cheaper than the plans estimate, but maybe that’s a Michigan thing?)
Slide: $189
Sandbox sand (1 cubic yard): $75 including delivery
Labor: FREE (thanks, Papa!)
Total cost: $943

It really ended up being SO much less expensive than a comparable kit might have been.

Also this past weekend I put up string lights on the patio, running from the garage to the apple tree and back, and I love the way it makes the whole patio feel: festive, like we’re setting up for a party (except that I’m an introvert so I sat out there by myself till 11:00 the other night and loved it). And we have fireflies! I’ve been dying to see if we would get them. We sat out there with Vivienne when she wouldn’t go to sleep a few nights ago and spotted them with her.

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A week or so ago I heard the poem The Gate by Marie Howe, and the last five lines have really stayed with me.

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This, sort of looking around.

I have a lot of “This” moments lately, and the majority of them seem to be happening outdoors.

We eventually put sand in the sandbox, and that post is here.

Potlucks here and there

June 11, 2017 / davamarie / 1 Comment

The midwest continues to surprise me. There are so many tiny, quirky things that I don’t even think of until I stumble upon them and am suddenly reminded of how very different Michigan can be from New York. Like tonight. We went to a free “music in the park” event downtown, and we brought a blanket and some snacks, but when Kristin asked if we should bring the stroller I said no, because surely it would be close quarters and would obstruct someone’s view. Then we got there and this was the scene.

In case you’re unfamiliar with either NY or the midwest, let me tell you that no one would EVER bring chairs to something like this in NY. It would be totally impractical because you’d be hauling them through the subway or walking with them for miles through the city. I mean, there are chairs in that photo that are not folding/camp chairs! People brought like, patio dining set chairs downtown to a park! To be fair, I’m not exactly judging the midwest here. It’s outrageously convenient to be able to throw tons of stuff into your car and take it with you everywhere. In New York I grew accustomed to trying to figure out what I needed for the day that was entirely portable and packing very strategically. Still, coming upon this scene tonight was entertaining.

But the most amusing moment actually happened last Thursday. We had an all-school picnic for the kids’ preschool. It was held at a different public park, and everyone was asked to bring a dish to pass according to the age of your children: a main dish for 4s, fruit or veggies for toddlers, dessert for 5s. Since we had kids of multiple ages we were given the freedom to choose, and I mulled over my options for awhile (on Pinterest, naturally). With so many preschoolers there I wondered if I ought to bring something simple and kid-pleasing, but ultimately I decided that parents would be there too and they might like to have something a little more interesting. I decided on a quinoa salad with chickpeas, tomato, avocado, cilantro, and spinach.

Photo from the recipe linked above

While I was shopping for the recipe I wondered, “Does this all need to be organic? Will people mind if it isn’t? Do I have to tell them one way or the other?” I also wondered if I ought to bring the ingredients on a note card to set next to the dish. If this seems crazy you need to understand that in New York that’s just how we do. There are a few major potlucks each year in my office, and everyone knows that what with allergies and gluten intolerance and people eating paleo or whatever the thing is at the time, you must be thoughtful and you must bring a complete list of ingredients to post next to your dish.

I had to scramble a bit to finish work and throw the recipe together, get it all packed up to transport along with some organic grapes and some backup quesadillas for the kids in case they weren’t willing to eat potluck food. We got there 30 minutes late and I was feeling badly about it, and worried that everyone would have finished eating already by the time we added our contributions to the table. I walked into the picnic area and suddenly remembered that we are not in NY anymore. Almost everyone brought pizza or store-bought cookies. There may have been one bowl of carefully crafted fruit salad, and one pan of rice crispy treats, and maybe some sad looking spaghetti, but that was it. I way overthought this one; I totally could have phoned it in.

I told the story to a colleague of mine and she said that I could probably write a book on this by now. “All of the urban mamas would buy it,” she said, “Like that book about French babies. Why are moms in the midwest so much less stressed?” Because they don’t bother with Pinterest meals at potlucks, that’s why. That and probably so much more. But they do apparently bring their own patio furniture to concerts, so maybe it’s all a wash.

On baptism, rituals, and coming together

June 6, 2017 / davamarie / Leave a comment

This past Sunday evening we attended the baptism of our six-month-old twin nieces. The parents had the ceremony (is ceremony even the right word? Suddenly I have no idea) at their home, outside on the deck in the early evening summer light. They live in a beautiful wooded place so the backdrop really was quite lovely, and while the hour and the day and the drive made it a bit inconvenient for us, I could see why they may have chosen evening over the alternatives.

It was a couple of hours in the car each way for us, and since the kids are all strapped into their car seats on road trips we have a bit more freedom than usual to listen to music or podcasts or just to talk to one another with limited interruption. Especially on the way home, we spent a lot of time talking about baptism: what it means, why people do it, upon what criteria godparents are chosen, and also about rituals and traditions in general but particularly in relation to raising children.

I don’t come from a terribly religious family. My sister and I weren’t baptized, although we did attend church semi-regularly in spurts growing up (or at least that’s the way I remember it). I actually think well of that church, enough that when K wanted to attend this past Christmas Eve, we went there. Kristin grew up in an Evangelical Lutheran family, so she’s much more familiar with the nature and reasons behind all of the rituals and traditions than I am. We don’t attend church now, and I think that I can speak for both of us when I say that we’re spiritual but not religious. Personally, my sense of spirituality is much more tied to nature and beauty and gratitude than it is to anything related to the Bible or any other text. We didn’t choose to baptize our children (and in fact, I don’t remember it ever coming up in conversation) and I have no doubts whatsoever about that choice, although I respect the choices of those who do.

I like rituals and traditions. I like the weight of them, the significance of marking something meaningful to you and your family. I like the history associated with generations before us having gone through the same motions and recited similar sentiments in a shared belief in something. But I’ve never been able to make much sense of the idea of signing your children up for something that they haven’t chosen and aren’t old enough to consent to. That said, I’m sure you could point out dozens of hypocritical things that I am OK with that are somehow similar (piercing a toddler’s ears, for example). But I suppose what’s confusing to me about baptism is that, in my mind, real faith is about what you deeply believe in, often despite challenges to those beliefs. If you’ve been in the world and really lived, and heard all of the different perspectives and opinions and you still believe, that’s faith to me. But signing a baby up for something, it doesn’t feel like it means very much in the grand scheme of faith.

That said, I do understand what it means to be a parent and to want the very best future for your children, and to have hopes and dreams for them and to try to do what you hope will set them on the path for a happy, fulfilling life. I’m sure that for many people who baptize their babies, that’s what they have in mind. I also know plenty of people who have done it because, “that’s just what you do” and/or because it was important to grandparents, and I can see that too. It would water the whole thing down for me, but OK. It doesn’t do any harm.

On the way to the baptism, we listened to an episode of a parenting podcast about multicultural families and how they pass traditions and elements of identity down to their children. We also listened to an episode of On Being with poet Marie Howe, that addressed “the ways family and religion shape our lives.” Perhaps surprisingly, both of these were chosen somewhat at random. We weren’t looking for things that tied into our plans for the day. But both of these pieces, along with an article I found when Googling Howe as we drove, led our conversation about baptism in interesting directions. That article in particular made Kristin and I miss our NY tribe desperately.

So many rituals for babies have to do with who they are and who their parents hope that they will become. It makes sense; we know so little about them when they’re born, so it’s not as if anyone could stand up and give the sort of storytelling speeches we give at weddings or memorial services. At that stage of life everything is about hope and potential. We’ve been to one Jewish naming ceremony, not a bris, but just a naming ceremony months after the child was born, and it was lovely. I recall K and I talking about how much we enjoyed it, this coming together of people to celebrate the life of a little boy. It wasn’t an especially religious ceremony, but it felt like community and celebration of both his place in the world and the significance of his existence in his parents’ lives. In the podcast, one of the mothers talks about this ceremony and how it’s kind of the only option for Jewish girls, since a bris is only for boys, but that a bris is meaningful because (if done by the book) everyone comes together within seven days of a birth to welcome the baby and celebrate. We didn’t circumcise our boys, so that’s also not a thing that we believe in especially, but the idea of your tribe coming together from all over to celebrate the enormity of having a child, showing up to meet that baby and say “welcome,” it makes me wish that there was a tradition like that for everyone, regardless of faith. Not that you can’t make something up, and a friend of ours has recommended this book (which I borrowed at one time, but haven’t read), but I’m not sure that making up your own ceremony and inviting friends from around the world would work in quite the same way. If there wasn’t a tradition already in place that we show up to these things, no matter what, would people show up?

When Kristin and I reflect on our wedding, we often talk about one of the most powerful elements being this idea that everyone in attendance is there in support of this life-altering choice you’ve made. And one way or another, their presence is their way of saying “I commit to supporting you in this life together.” There’s often some acknowledgement in the ceremony that the couple will need that support, because marriage is hard sometimes. Having a child is such a transformative experience, so fraught with challenge and uncertainty and fear and sometimes loneliness. It seems like a gigantic miss to me that we don’t have a ritual in place, all faith identities aside, that does something similar when a child is born or adopted. When I imagine what it might have been like to have people we love from around the world show up to meet our babies and welcome them and to commit to supporting us through the challenges of raising children, it’s such a wonderful vision. That’s a ritual that I would carry out without question (well, except for the part about essentially planning a wedding immediately after having a baby, on very little sleep, not having showered for days…that doesn’t sound quite as idyllic).

I feel like we need it though; we as a culture, I mean. A ritual that acknowledges the challenge and transformation that parenthood brings, where we all show up for our people and say, “I’m here and I’ll be here when you need me (for you and your child), and you can do this because you have all of us in your corner.” Becoming parents feels every bit as powerful as getting married, doesn’t it?

Did you baptize your children (or will you), or carry out another ritual for them? Why did you choose what you did?

Enjoying everyday good stuff

June 3, 2017 / davamarie / Leave a comment

The last few days have included a few things I’ve really been looking forward to, but upon reflection I can see that they’re not all that big, but rather the kind of everyday joys we hoped to get a lot more of in this new Michigan life.

Last week both Kristin and I decided to take a day off and accompany Jonah on a field trip. His preschool goes on field trips all the time, but this is only the second time we’ve allowed him to go (parents have to leave car seats, and I hate taking it out and putting it back in again, so he only goes if we can take him ourselves). This time it was for Party In The Park, a library event that features dozens of readers going from blanket to blanket (all packed with kids) and reading to them. Lots of the readers were dressed in costume as the book characters they were reading, and it was SO MUCH FUN. No, he didn’t need both of us to drive him, but we both really wanted to go.

I mean, it kind of felt like celebrity spotting.

The field trip only went until about 11:30, so we took advantage of the afternoon and went out to lunch and decided to spend the rest of the day planning a summer mini-vacation to northern Michigan. The day felt surprisingly long and full of quality time. I think that we both needed it, both in terms of the special time with Jonah and the time to make plans we’re excited about without interruption.

This weekend was also on my list of things-to-look-forward-to, because it was the annual art fair and Do-Dah Parade downtown. You have to understand, this was a BIG weekend in my childhood memory. I come from a family of art lovers, and we always spent a lot of time at the art fair, but before that we always grabbed a good spot to watch the parade go by. I remember the Do-Dah Parade being chock-full of silly, wonderful, thematic, or just off-the-wall entries, so I’d talked it up pretty big with the kids. I knew that I ought to temper my expectations after the outrageously disappointing holiday parade this past December, but I couldn’t help it. I was psyched. Unfortunately, it really was kind of mediocre; it seems like some of the enthusiasm for creative entries has died down a bit over the past 30 years and there’s a lot more phoning-it-in going on. Even so, the kids said that they liked it and they were pretty rapt throughout.

We met up with Gigi and Papa Doc just before it started, and then strolled through the art fair with them, which just feels like such a wonderful thing to be able to do. Not only because they’re a big part of why this weekend feels important to me, but just because it’s so nice to be able to spend time with them so easily and casually. They’ve popped over to our house on a few evenings recently, just for a quick hello and maybe a glass of wine, and that’s been absolutely wonderful. The kids can’t get enough of them.

More moments of everyday happiness: watching these baby birds grow up and get ready to leave the nest.

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Or how about seeing Jonah share his remote controlled tarantula with Jude and show him how to use it? Both horrible and wonderful at the same time.

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Or how about a hula hoop dance party downtown with the kids the night before the parade? We had them out way past bedtime but I loved everything about it (well, except for the meltdowns once we got home, but you know what I mean).

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And finally, those weekend afternoons when everyone else is napping and I suggest to Jonah that we get out the paints and he’s totally into it. Lately he wants to collaborate on a painting with me (something we started by accident), and I love it. Today he wanted to paint outer space and then we painted a forest (he added a fox and a dragonfly). Sure, there may have also been tanks and zombies in at least one of his paintings, but I love these quiet moments with him. I was putting away groceries and I looked over and really noticed him standing there painting, and I knew that the groceries didn’t matter at all, so I left them on the floor and joined him.