Family Fun fame

Here we are!

Family Fun has put highlights from its October issue online. You can't get to our article, but you can see our picture in the table of contents if you follow the link to view the magazine, then click the right arrow in the upper right Browse Magazine tab.

A rare update from Tickles

A few days ago I was pushing Rebecca on our little swing, when she started leaning back and pumping her legs. The rhythm was off, but she definitely knew what she was trying to do.

"Tickles taught her," Katherine informed me. "Tickles is her grandmother in Babyland, and she takes care of her."

Even though Tickles is imaginary, I find this strangely comforting.

On Professions

Just met a woman at clogging who started as a medical student ("I graduated with everything you need except the desire to be a doctor"), transferred to forensic pathology, is now a programmer at Microsoft, and is thinking it might be time to change fields again because she's getting bored. It made me think again about the idea that each person is destined for one specific profession, and will become miserable and unfulfilled unless they find it. In other words, the myth.

Ruth Reichl, author, food critic, and former editor of Gourmet Magazine, recently published a small memoir "On Not Becoming My Mother and other things she taught me along the way." She writes that her mother was warned against med school (she'd never marry), told she was too homely to attract men, and promised that marriage and children would bring happiness she could never find in professional life. The first marriage ended in disaster, and the second led to long depressions as her mother tried to find happiness in a life of childrearing and housework, after a brief but glorious stint as a New York intellectual. Ruth's moral: get a career, find happiness.

But one person might be good at a myriad of different things--and might enjoy them all. In fact, in our society people must now constantly reinvent themselves as their jobs dry up. (I know this from a time when I didn't reinvent myself--and stayed an unemployed technical writer instead.) The exact profession a person finds (or doesn't) may not be as important as broader life ideals of work, service, growth, education, that can happen in may ways. In the home or out of it.

I say this after a weekend of heavy duty candy experiments, in which we dissolved Pixie Sticks to make crystal growing solution, noticed color changes in our solutions, actually made crystals, poked and broke and redissolved the sugary crystals (Rebecca figured out that she really likes to eat them), and recorded our findings, flush with success. Ten years ago I could never have dreamed that I would become a "Mad Scientist Mother," as one friend called me today. Or that cooking a really great dish would become one of my escapes (not that I do it often enough). Or that I would end up as a resume consultant to dozens of friends and relatives after bombing so badly with my own job searches. (Potential clients should note that my resume advice comes from lessons I learned by doing them wrong, lessons I learned from doing things right, and lessons on targeting your audience and selling yourself that every freelance writer has to learn.)

Am I a stifled housewife, deprived of intellectual conversation and burdened by overwork? Am I the radiant mother who has realized that fulfillment comes best from loving and raising children? Am I the at-home intellectual who still nurtures her talents and pursues learning? Truthfully, I can feel like any or all of the above, when I'm not too busy putting food on the table, delivering kids to school, attacking clutter, or chasing the baby to think about it at all. I'm in the middle, just trying to get by. And I think most everybody knows the feeling--career or no career.

Day Hike : Snow Lake

Alex and I hiked to Snow Lake this afternoon, which appears to be the wildernessarea superhighway. We arrived at the trailhead in the afternoon and found the parking lot overflowing with cars. It is about 3.5 miles each way, and I carried Alex part of the way--maybe 1.5 miles--and the rest of the way we sang a hiking song: Step, Step, Hike. Hiking down the trail. Step, Step, Hike. ...

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School Lunches II

One week down, and Katherine still likes my lunches. Frankly, this is a better record than I expected.

School Lunches I

After getting trail mix with M&Ms in her lunch:

"Mommy, can you please not send any more candy to school with me? There are lots of kids who don't have any dessert. Besides, think of all that sugar."

She would rather have "fruit and healthy food."

On buying lunch at school:

"Most of the lunch is like fast food. So I don't want to be buying it often."

Too Many Pictures

Alex has a drawer where he puts his finished artwork, including art from Primary. Today he realized he couldn't fit anything more in. His evaluation:

"My picture drawer is too full. I think we should stop going to church."

On Missing Sleep

It's bad enough that we don't go to bed early (for shame, all you friends whose blogs are too interesting to turn off late at night!) but I've been having trouble sleeping the last few nights, too. The night before last it was an early morning power outage that astounded our prenaturally alert kids (and incidentally blew out my main computer). Six o'clock in the morning, we start hearing "The bathroom light doesn't work!" "Neither does the study light!" "How can I go to the bathroom when it's dark?" "Wear your headlamp, Alex!" (Luckily, the power was back on by the time I had to heat breakfast and dry my hair.) Then last night I awoke from a particularly disturbing dream involving Tuck Everlasting and a toilet and couldn't go back to sleep. Laramie had to lullaby me with own dream, in which he rented a vacation house which was then trucked away with all his possessions.

Come on, brain. Let me sleep--it's nighttime and tomorrow's coming too darn fast!

Becca's first (mock) phone conversation

Becca, talking into her new phone (a disused DVD remote)

"He-wo?"
"Yeah."
"Bye!"

What more do you need?

His first day, too.

 

Things I never guessed would be hard to teach kids

--Putting on socks
--Washing hair
--Eating with a spoon (Hold it horizontal, Becca!)

Six reasons you haven't really caught a salmon

When you fish for pink salmon with a lead weight and a spinner with a shrimp on it, you know you might have a salmon when something bumps the line. But it could just as easily be any of these:
--Your lead weight hits the river bottom, making your line dip
--The current of the river sways the line
--You shift your weight, making the lead weight shift
--A boat wake lifts your line
--A bottom feeder steals your bait
--A salmon nibbles your bait, but you miss it because you're dwelling on everything else it might be!

More words

Becca can now say
--Here (when she hands you something)
--Bye bye
--Uh-oh

Various family members have also heard "flower" and "Grandma"

and last night, Laramie was teaching her

"Remarkable!"

Will the First Grader please stand up?