Our Bold Adventure Continues

Or, trying to fill time creatively while Daddy's on a business trip: (Mostly we've had fun. Been okay. Wrapped Christmas presents, seen friends, done our regular activities. But there were a few dark spots in the week. Notably, all coming in the afternoon or evening. Hm.) • Dinner at the hibachi Japanese steak house. (I thought they'd think it was cool to watch food being cooked right in front of us. All they noticed was the loud exhaust fan over their heads. They watched, but while clinging to me with their hands over their ears and saying "go home.") • Bagel for snack at 10:30 a.m. (They didn't eat much lunch and then were whiney and hungry by 4:30. I forgot they hadn't had much lunch and rebuffed their pleas for an extra snack, only fueling the deteriorating situation. Eventually I caught on and we had an early dinner, but it was rough for a while.) • Going to the new coffee shop-with-a-play-area in town after kindergarten hours: "the big kids are

Sometimes I spend a great deal of time thinking about a person's sense of place. I mean, some days I think about this almost constantly. It's one of those topics that seems like common sense, like the armchair sociologist in all of us should be able to construct an answer, an explanation for how it works. Maybe there's a formula... But it's not that easy when you dive in deep. I'm not just talking about me finding my place here, though the ever-present work on that front is certainly fueling these thoughts. I'm talking about outward signs of connection versus inner feelings of grounding. I'm talking about why one person feels at ease in a place while another with a similar situation feels awkward. Everyone in Boulder is from somewhere else. It's like Manhattan that way. No one is really from here, except just to prove me wrong, once in a while I meet a true native. Sometimes I'll meet a Colorado native who has been lured by Boulder's siren song,

So I signed us up to go see a children's theater production. It seemed like a good thing to do, a fun outing on a Saturday afternoon. The girls had never seen a live play before. Aren't we always looking for things to do with them on the weekends? The show was advertised as for children ages preschool through five. Bingo. I got four tickets. Plus, it was through the twins club here -- there were 80 tickets, potentially 20 sets of twins and their families there. Perhaps, I thought, I'd meet someone with twins my girls' age. I was all proud of myself for planning such a nice event for our family. Except the show was Jack and the Beanstalk. Do you remember the story? It's scary. Really scary. I checked a book out of the library so M and O would know the story in advance. There's a giant who EATS LITTLE KIDS. He bellows Fee Fi Fo Fun and stomps around. Up until now the scariest thing my kids have been able to face is swiper from Dora, and even then they sometimes qu

O's actual diet today: a few bites of oatmeal a slice of apple water a few pretzels two bites of mac and cheese a bite of celery a banana part of a sippy cup of milk part of a sippy cup of juice about 12 goldfish a few udon noodles chocolate milk (special treat at the restaurant) a couple bites of her portion of a shared cookie M's actual diet today: a full bowl of grits (she asked for seconds) a piece of raisin bread multiple apple slices water milk a dixie cup of pretzels a full serving of mac and cheese celery sticks a banana two sippy cups of milk banana chips dried pineapple a sippy cup of juice a bowl of udon noodles chocolate milk (special treat at the restaurant) a quarter of a large cookie Recent research suggests that picky eating is genetic , or at least mostly so. Nature, not nurture. I have here a case study that proves the point -- in fact, the researchers used twins (though not ours). We've done nothing different with our girls. We model the same to both of

Funnydad's been away for a week, including the weekend this time. His new job requires a good bit of travel often for long stretches, so I'm trying to learn how to handle his trips gracefully rather than just, well, surviving them. Earlier in the week I had all kinds of witty thoughts about a post that would include the great things we did to make the time pass quickly. Activities, outings, projects. Days one through four weren't bad. Things started going downhill on Friday, day five, and now today, day seven, we're shot. All three of us. Forget grace, this is about endurance. In addition to the stress you might expect, the girls picked this week to DROP THEIR NAP. I'm serious. We'd been in "rest time" mode for a while where they might or might not sleep, but this week they let the pretense of rest time go and started barreling through the day. Despite all my best parenting techniques, threats, and punishments, they were bouncing around their room, moc