Our Bold Adventure Continues

O: Mama, do I have a cockatoo? Me: No, sweetie, you don't. O: Oh. (pause) O: Can I have a cockatoo when I grow up? And can we have a hanger outside for him to sit on? Me: Sure, sweetie, if you want a cockatoo when you grow up, you can have one. O (this time to M): When we grow up do you want to have a cockatoo? M: Can I have a whale? ***************************************************** As amusing as this exchange was, what I find most remarkable is that as she thought about that mysterious time when she would be "grown up" O turned to M to ask if she'd want a cockatoo as well. They've never been apart. They've always slept in the same room, eaten at the same time, played together. In their little three-year-old minds they're going to be together forever, sitting across the table from each other coloring even when they're grown up. Yet, somehow, O recognizes that M is a different person to whom she has to *ask* if M wants a cockatoo, too. It's comp...

So we forced her. (See previous post about getting O to be in the snow.) A friend (!) here in Boulder offered us her condo in Keystone and we jumped at the chance. Cute little one-bedroom where the bedroom is a loft accessed with a spiral staircase. The girls loved the spiral staircase and sleeping in their sleeping bags almost as much as we loved marveling at the unbelievable landscape. O before the whining and crying and asking to be carried started. O after the whining and crying and asking to be carried started. We rewarded them with hot cocoa when our flat 1/2 mile "hike" was done. We don't know what M is doing here, but she's having fun. Keystone is a little less than two hours from Boulder, and it's a pretty easy drive. It's essentially the first major ski place west of Denver, about a half hour east of Vail, and is just a few minutes from Copper Mountain. (Yeah, if you're not a skier, don't worry. It was all blah blah blah geography to me, t...

It's no small undertaking to get twins ready to play in the snow. And twice now we've gotten the girls all dressed to go outside only to have O announce she doesn't want to go. She's afraid of getting cold. She wants to make a snowman and Colorado's powder snow doesn't pack well. She's generally cautious about new things, and since they can't remember last year in Minnesota, this counts as new. The most heartbreaking thing in the world is to think you're going to get a few moments of peace while dad takes the kids to play outdoors only to have one freeze at the threshhold and say, "Noooooo. I want to stay insiiiiide." I guess we could have forced her, but there will be times when we have to go out and she'll have no choice, so we'll save the screaming and crying for then. M kept saying, "The snow is everywhere! The snow is everywhere!" And then she'd list the places she saw snow: "it's on their roof, it's ...

Today as you sit down to enjoy your turkey dinner, give thanks to Sarah. Sarah Josepha Hale. She's the one who is largely responsible for Thanksgiving as you know it. (I'm showing my geek side here, but Thanksgiving has a kind of interesting history, so bear with me. Or come back to the blog next week when I'll surely have more cute things to say about your favorite twins.) Like many traditions Thanksgiving has changed over time, but it began with the persistent efforts of a nineteenth-century magazine editor. Well, actually, it began as an occasional harvest festival. Long before the Mayflower set sail, harvest celebrations were commonplace, though not necessarily codified and annual, in England and among many Native American groups. In the New World during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Thanksgiving was primarily a regional New England holiday celebrating family and community; it was largely unknown in the South. I'm sure the people in Colorado at...

Maybe finding your way in a new community is like dating. It's common knowledge that when you're desperate to find that perfect someone you won't, but when you're not looking he shows up. (For instance, on the subway.) This weekend funnydad and I were minding our own business, not actively trying to recruit friendships when a neighbor knocked on our door and asked if we wanted to bike over to meet "Ralphie" the live buffalo mascot for Colorado University at Boulder. Of course we did. So we piled our kids in the chariot, he piled his kids in his chariot and off we went in a little bicycle caravan. To get there Sebastian showed us bike routes through town that we hadn't figured out on our own yet. Suddenly Boulder blossomed in my mind -- things connected, the ease of getting around on a bike became even more clear, and instead of feeling "small" as I've often characterized this place, it felt "accessable." There are places I may never...

I am here to tell you that a roll of scotch tape is all you need on an airplane if you're traveling alone with preschool-age twins. That and a portable DVD player. Since, as we all know, the airplane has rules, the DVD player can't come out until the fasten seat belt sign goes off. And three-year-olds will show unprecedented attention spans while watching for it to chime off. (They'll also ask if we're in the air yet while people are still boarding and announce they have to go to the bathroom during landing.) Until the magic of the DVD player can offer some distraction, there's the tape. It's sticky, it's tricky, it makes a mess, and most of the time they're not allowed to touch the stuff. So I give each girl her very own roll when we board and it keeps them occupied for the whole flight. They put it on the window, they put it on the seat. They try to cut off "little" pieces, and then stretch it the length of their arms. We play a game with it:...

This week has been all about sickness. Dodging it, dealing with it, ignoring it. It began with O. They're in preschool, this is fall, sickness is to be expected. Though snuffly, O was fine. I'm the kind of person who just keeps going, so I expect that of my kids (with a few extra cuddles, hot cocoa, and longer naps). We all just keep going these days. I've read articles about how people don't call in sick anymore, the culture of the American workplace is such that we expect people to be having chemotherapy if they call in sick. It even has a name, "presenteeism," as in the opposite of "absenteeism." There's a backlash, even, people who advocate -- gasp -- staying home when you're sick. At any rate, especially with two, I tend to rely on our friend children's tylenol and push through a cold. But then, of course, funnydad and M got sick, too. I guess I had a low-grade version of late last weekend, but I dodged the bullet. We had visiting gr...