nuggets, 07/27/12: disconnect

I've been gone for a while again, first involuntarily and then with something like purpose. Our internet sabbaths, which started almost six months ago, have morphed from a tentative ritual to a comfortable tradition. We turn off the internet Friday night or Saturday morning, and we don't turn it back on--except to check the weather or map an outing--until Sunday night. In the absence of data plans for our phones (my phone is so old that some of my students fail to recognize it as a phone), we swim--on Saturday and Sunday--in a halcyon sea of disconnect. During the week, there is only so much time to parent, read, and blog.

Monte Bello Open Space Preserve (Stevens Creek Nature Trail)

These digital sabbaths have reclaimed a part of my mind--slow, sensual, meditative--that I recognize with awe as both new and old. I find myself enjoying books with the pace and intensity of my late teenage years; I yearn to smell, touch, and taste stuff like garden herbs. Either this impulse to go back to the days of yore is a foreshadowing of middle age, or a break from the glitter of screens is successfully serving as a mental detox for this growing girl.

This past week I also attended a teacher-training seminar whose daily sessions lasted from 8.30 am to 3.30 pm. In the space of that time together, in a room crammed with thirty teachers, there was never a minute during which at least two or three people did not appear actively engaged with their various devices. A guy next to me yesterday spent the full four morning hours playing a game on his iPad, while the rest of us talked, read, and listened. That's a teacher. That's a guy who will walk in a classroom a month from now, expecting--one hopes--the attention and focus of his own students. Many others had both smart phones and iPads, and several frequently texted while surfing (or doing who-knows-what) on their iPads.

I'm not a complete Luddite (yet), but I find myself thinking crazy thoughts when I see people around me engulfed in their virtual realities. Pack up and move to a homestead in Maine or Montana? Raise chickens, grow vegetables, and tend sheep? Write with pen on paper? Never show our kids what a computer even looks like? Ooops...they've already seen a few.

Mostly, I worry about children--my own, as well as those I teach--and at least two recent articles, in The New York Times and in Newsweek, do not help to allay my worries. If we don't model a life in which conversation is paramount and eye contact trumps screen glare, will they all grow up anxious, depressed, and unfocused? If we don't expose them to the beauty of the five senses--frequently, unrelentingly, and with gentle grace--will they never be able to enjoy their bodies? If we don't limit their access to electronic devices, will they shun solitude, scorn introspection, and develop ADHD?

I realize that some of these worries sound paranoid exaggerated, but the underlying questions do not seem insignificant for parents and teachers. The tenor of our internet-free weekends is so palpably different from the frenzied pace of our week days that I often find myself resenting the moment the blue light of the modem goes on and I know that, even if I choose not to look at it, my email is there waiting to be checked. Rado and I frequently find ourselves talking for two or three hours on Saturday nights, and chores that otherwise might never get done or might squirm in the corners of days like unwanted puppies sort themselves out in the pauses of conversation.

Sava finds his first geocache! 

I'd like to suggest turning off the internet at 9 pm every night as our next step, but I am not sure how the Googler sitting next to me would take to that. Also, this blog will never get written.
***
Moving right on, with photos of the past three weeks and 
Stuff They Say

In the car on the way to a hike one Sunday:
Rado: You guys know it's not a good idea to snort jelly beans up your nose.

Raya: Is that how your grandpa died?

Rado: No, he was old and got very sick... 

Raya: Did they put him in the sand?

Tati: Well, yes, kind of; he was buried in the earth. 

Raya (after a short pause and some earnest thought): You should get a new grandpa.

For a blissful few weeks, Raya hated being put in her crib for time-outs, which meant that the crib was an excellent place to put her for time-outs. Now she no longer seems to care, so whenever we exile here there, she starts playing and singing as if we've just placed her on a vaudeville stage. During one such incident recently, Rado and I were discussing what to do next, now that she no longer cares, to which Sava replied blithely:

Next time, you should DROP her in her crib!

In case it's not clear, the connotation of "drop" here is "hurl."

We try hard to give our kids positive body images, which gets hard when dealing with stinky poop. I recently started calling Raya Stinkerbell whenever she makes a particularly smelly one, and, to counteract the implicit negativity of that, I speak of her poopy diapers as "brown presents." Shortly after Rado came back from work one day this week, Raya shouted (because shouting is how she speaks):

Hey, tati! Have you given your colleagues any brown presents today?

As hinted above, we work hard at fostering dinner-table conversation. Recently, Raya reiterated for the umpteenth time what she would like for her third birthday (her list is evolving and now endless; items get added every day).

Sava: I'm a little tired of hearing about it, Raya! 

Raya: Sava, can you please not talk about that?

We love to hear Raya answer her own questions:

When clouds are white, how do they get yellow by the sunshine?

Raya loves pretending to talk on the phone. It is perhaps her very favorite thing to do with one of us, and if we happen to be properly equipped with patience and focus, the results are often memorable. Also, as has been mentioned before, she is a loyal NPR listener.

Raya: Hey, Mitt Romney! What are you doing? Being president?

Mommy (as MR: it is important to immediately assume the interlocutor's voice): Hi, Raya! No, I am not president. Would you like me to be president?

Raya: No!!! I want Barack Obama! 

She is a conversationalist, no doubt, but also a shrewd strategist. We've had many talks about not throwing her napkin on the floor during meal time. Sometimes, we've even resorted to the above-mentioned crib timeout. So, a couple of weeks ago, when I noticed her napkin on the floor and just looked at her:

I threw my napkin!...(glances at me)

I dropped my napkin...(another, more cautious look)

My napkin fell down! 

A linguist, too, as her best Montana friend.

As part of efforts to supplement her innate girlie girliness which finds eloquent expression in her obsession with dolls, we took both kids to a model train exhibit that Sava has now loved for years. 

Raya: So, I am the engineer and you are the back-sitter!

:::

We went on a trial hike with the cub scouts last weekend, about which another time; still processing it.

Best part came after everyone left and we enjoyed a leisurely picnic on a large meadow. A whole lot of tickling and wrestling was had until pretty much everyone was breathless:

Lots of photos of limbs because it is truly a moment I'd like to remember until I die.

I've shared previously that Raya believes nipples are called buttons; for any number of reasons, we allow her to persist in that belief. When at the very end of the wrestling match on these photos Rado could not get them to stop tickling him, he said, "Guys, you're starting to push my buttons," to which Raya replied by sidling up to him and pushing his buttons while looking at him as if to say, "These buttons?"  Yes, this mama howled with laughter.

On that same outing, we recreated a house of sticks that we had built on a previous trip to the same park some months ago,

and Sava made repeated efforts to break Raya's leg.

She inadvertently posed for one of my favorite recent pictures:

:::

Other remaining tidbits:

We watched the July 4th fireworks in style on a Google lawn right next to the Shoreline Amphitheater; Sava loved playing sneaky statues with his best friend from preschool.

It blows my mind every single year to think that this is my kids' "homeland." 

:::

Summer concerts in front of the Mountain View Library rock.

Sava used to hate these but now thoroughly enjoys them.

Raya always wants to be up front.

:::

Paints are out.

:::

After much thinking and planning, a tiny front-yard herb garden!

:::

Raya got the very first haircut of her life, with aplomb and grace:

She told the hairdresser that her daddy cuts his own hair, to which the woman replied: "Honey, please promise me never to do that with your own hair!"

:::

Our whole family accompanied one of Sava's best friends from school for a day at Cal Academy--our first trip there.

While I have many unflattering things to say about the relationship between small children and large museums--no matter how beautifully curated--the kids mostly enjoyed themselves. My favorite part? The living roof.

And second best, the baby ostriches.

:::

With Sava's other "best" friend, whose mom I love to pieces, we spent a day at the children's museum at the foot of Golden Gate. 

A much much better place for kids.

Sava's favorite part was making a boat out of foam pieces. He was meticulous about it.

:::

This, in short, our last three weeks. In the spirit of less time in front of the computer is more time to read, talk, love, happy weekend, everyone.

We're off to Montana next weekend, so the next batch of pictures will feature sublime beauty.