september nuggets: home

Well, it's been almost two months since we came back from Bulgaria, and I finally get to write about being home. It's also more than a month since everyone went back to school, and I feel that, at long last, I am getting the hang of the three-times-five lunches that need to be made every evening, in addition to dinner. The key? Cook dinners that can be easily packaged and repackaged as lunches. Easier--far easier--said than done. Thank goodness one of us eats at Google.

Still, I come here to celebrate and chronicle our family, not to whimper about the challenges, so here goes--

Maybe because we left for a while, or maybe because it's a particularly good growing season in Northern California, we've been thinking and talking a lot about the food that comes from our CSA farms lately. As of recently, both boxes arrive on the same day, and when I come back from school each Wednesday, I bask in a sense of gratitude and bounty. (When I saw the box and exclaimed, "Look at that bounty!" today, Raya wanted to know what "bounty" meant, of course.)

Today's boxes contained: four kinds of pears, pluots, grapes, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, spinach, salad, cauliflower, cilantro, and summer squash. Doesn't sound like much necessarily, but consider that the pears are so sweet that eating them feels like drinking nectar--they drip when you bite in; the carrots rival the size of giant zucchini and tomorrow will go into a carrot and garbanzo creamy soup; each grape contains the equivalent zing of a tablespoon of sugar; Sava will shriek with delight when he hears the word "cauliflower"; and I recently made a pasta with summer squash and dill (of all things) that was unspeakably delicious. So, there is much promise in these boxes.

To celebrate being back and to bask in the bounty that is this corner of the world, we visited one of our farm's strawberry patches the first weekend after we returned. This was the kids' first time picking strawberries, and, as is typical in our family, Sava worked like a horse, with both focus and determination, while Raya sauntered and discoursed and sauntered more. When we came home with two overflowing flats of strawberries, no one believed we would eat all of them. Well, we did. Eat them, I mean.

A couple of weeks later, I started the school year by teaching Steinbeck's East of Eden, and the students and I spent hours talking about the importance of "place" in Steinbeck; having just gone to the farm, and then having taken the students to Steinbeck's hometown of Salinas, I now have a new appreciation of this vast state our family calls home. Besides being the hub of the world's computer industry, it is also the place that, for a couple hundred years, has been feeding most of itself and big swaths of America.
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Speaking of land, we skipped one scheduled camping trip right after we returned due to illness, but we did manage to squeeze two others in the past month. We have, officially, reached the age when camping with the kids is both fun and relatively easy.

Rado can now put up our palatial tent in about an hour (or two), and while the task finally feels manageable, we also just purchased two small two-person tents, to take with us when we next go for a single night and also to make our first attempt, come spring, at backpacking.

I have a ton of photos from our first trip to Portola Redwoods State Park, which also happened to be our first-ever two-nighter. Here is what sleeping in a tent with a four-year old and her doll looks like.

And here is what waking up with a four- and a seven-year old feels like.

Sleep past dawn is essentially impossible, what with birds squawking, the wind rustling, or the ocean lapping, and the energy levels within seconds of wakefulness make the space shuttle take-off seem like a child's play.

Once these parents have managed to peel sleep off their eyes and make coffee, though, it is all bright sunshine, and fresh air, and the smell of early-morning redwoods. The kids LOVE camping.  

Days are spent playing outside,

hiking,

 

 

or playing while hiking.

Kids have this enviable ability to find something to do no matter where life deposits them. The excesses of our modern world are nowhere more evident than in the woods, where children--far from all plastic and all devices--find hours of entertainment among dirt, trees, and water.

 

 

prison break!

Evenings hold special magic when camping, particularly for kids like ours who normally go to bed around 7-8 pm (yes, we are that kind of parents) and therefore hardly ever get to witness darkness in summer. In the woods, a flashlight illuminating the dimness of the surrounding forest makes for enchanting scenarios of pretend play.

 There is also sneaking into other people's tents,

 as well as laughing hysterically, oblivious to exhaustion, around the fire.

Speaking of fire, there is also of course the roasting of marshmallows. Our kids staunchly refuse to eat s'mores as they find the marshmallows "too sticky," but they wouldn't, under penalty of death, give up the privilege of roasting them.

 

If you luck out and share a tent site with Korean friends, you also get to taste amazing barbecued pork chops that have been marinating in the sauce equivalent of heaven for a few days.

You might also have friends who thought of bringing stuff other than tents and sleeping bags, such face paint, for instance, which keeps certain small individuals entertained for about an hour.

And the coolest thing about camping in a State park? There is the beautiful natural stuff all around you, and then there is the deep, satisfying sense that someone is there to take care of it. The kids did a morning of crafts with the local rangers,

and the night before Sava attended a late "campfire" that featured a long presentation of songs and information about  . . . banana slugs.

yup, that's a lighted screen up there; I am aware of the irony, but the ranger's funny and enthusiastic presence more than made up for it 

see the banana slug?

Banana slugs abound on the floor of the California redwood forests and, should you ever need to know anything about them, Sava might be able to help you out.

Speaking of the boy, he also talked us into bringing along his bike to the redwoods and, amazingly, found occasions to use it despite the lack of a suitable child-friendly bike trail (the only one available at the park is for older, more experienced bikers, fyi).

He and Gabriel set up a game whereby runner raced biker down a steep hill past the bathrooms, while mother busily dialed 911 to make sure it worked out there in the forest.

In sum, camping at Portola was wonderful fun.

 

 We'd go there again in a heartbeat.

Especially with friends.

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As I roll through photos from our second camping trip, at a beach near Santa Cruz, here are some nuggets about what's been happening with the kiddos since our return.

Sava started second grade. Gasp. He came back home on the third day of school upset about a task he had been given in one of his classes. The teacher asked them to draw self-portraits and then insisted that they draw the eyes in a particular way--dot + circle, rather than just dot. Sava refused to do that, having never done it before, and asked the teacher why he was being asked to follow instructions if the picture was meant to represent his perception of himself (alright, he probably didn't say "perception," but he could have). She said, in effect, "because I say so," and he proceeded to stomp and bawl. Well, not quite, but close enough.

During the long discussion at home which followed, we explained to him that 1) his reaction was both logical and admirable and 2) when in Rome, we do like the Romans. It is tough explaining to a seven-year old why both creativity and conformity matter in the real world; as adults, we toe the line instinctively, sometimes--but not often--ending up on the wrong side.

We want our kids to cultivate both their individuality--their unique passions for the things that fire them up and make them who they are--and their respect for and ability to function in a group.

Sava understood why it was important to follow his teacher's instructions and, when he finally tried her way of doing eyes, graciously admitted that he quite liked the end result.

He now regularly tells us about things that she's taught them that he didn't know before, and we encourage him wholeheartedly when we see him thinking or doing outside the box.

Speaking of doing and box, paper airplanes are back--he makes a dozen a day on average--and, at his own insistence, Sava is now enrolled in a weekly woodworking workshop. The idea arose from one of those casual remarks children make in passing that we, as parents, can either ignore or take very very seriously. Well, I took seriously Sava's remark about wanting to make stuff out of wood like Papa Bear because it sounded like something he would genuinely like, even if it was something he hadn't pondered very long.

With some digging, we found a small workshop for kids in Palo Alto run by an Israeli man, where the children go in stages, very gradually, from making a clothes hanger, to a wooden bird, to an airplane, and then a wooden boat.

Sava looks forward to his woodworking workshop with more enthusiasm than just about anything else during the week. Even though it's on a Friday, and he would normally be exhausted when I pick him up from school, the prospect of sawing and filing and hammering--followed by a detailed report of what he accomplished when he comes back home--makes us feel, when we talk to him, like we are standing in the path of sunshine.

His math teacher sent us an unsolicited note a week or so ago, telling us what a fantastic student he is and how much she loves his enthusiasm, so I can say safely that--at seven-and-a-half--Sava has the capacity for deep joy--whether from woodworking or biking or PE class or reading books or doing math--that would be his most lovable quality if he is able to preserve it into adulthood.

Sister, for her part, has visibly grown over the past couple of months. Everyone who sees her after the summer remarks on how tall and how big she looks. It is true that, seemingly overnight, she has gone from a hybrid toddler-preschooler to a full-blown preschooler and young child.

Half of her dresses are suddenly an inch or so too short, and when she insists loudly on the right to choose her outfit every single morning, we often conduct lengthy negotiations on what to put under the dress in order to cover her beautiful, squeezable, delicious buns.

 

As of the start of this school year, she now attends preschool five mornings a week, and the transition--while noticeable--has not been exceptionally rough. Rado or I pick her up daily at 12:30 pm, and she is tired throughout the afternoon but often able to keep it together by lying in bed with one of us, reading books, talking about babies, etc. Were it not for the fact that Rado is able to take off a couple of hours in the middle of the day twice a week in order to be with her while I teach past noon, she'd probably be going some afternoons as well. We are thankful for what we have.

 

At school, since she is in a group with a bunch of kids who will be heading to Kindergarten next year (she gets an extra year of preschool because of her late birthday), she's being exposed to "structure" for the first time. They are learning "zoophonics" (don't ask), and each morning involves "table time," which includes everything from cutting, drawing, writing, playing board games under supervision, etc.

When we talked with her teacher a couple of weeks ago, she confirmed what we had already sensed, which is that Raya loves table time. She is really into the whole concept of school, and she takes her role as the student--and, at home, as the teacher of her dolls--very very seriously. We get detailed reports at dinner time on how many triangles she colored and cut, where she pasted them, what it all meant, etc. Often, she'll interrupt Sava as soon as he starts telling us about his day, lest we should forget that she, too, went to school, and she, too, had things happen to her there. When not exasperating, her enthusiasm can be quite contagious.

 

 

Santa Cruz & environs is the heart of Northern California surfing culture

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Being home has also meant getting back in the rhythm of simple days. Besides table time, Raya is also getting exposed to a number of board games at preschool, so she is finally reaching the age when the following scene can be witnessed with daily regularity:

She was thrilled, upon return, to be reunited with Phoebe, and the following scene also repeats itself at least once a week:

While enduring a lot, this kiddie couch has also collected our fondest memories from the past three years:

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Have I mentioned before that my kids have the most awesomest father ever?...the one who will do puzzles with them with the kind of infinite patience that, when merely witnessing it, makes their mommy all jittery and restless--

The one who will "wrestle" with them almost any hour of any day--

 And the one who will feed an overheated girl at a party her coveted sugar-loaded brownie--

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Have I also mentioned that we are lucky to live, for the time being, in a cool neighborhood that organizes things like Play Day on the lawn?

While we share the general concern that thanks to Google's exponential growth, Mountain View is becoming ridiculously over-priced, we also have a weak spot for this town. 

It's the kind of place where kids can draw with chalk in front of the neighbors' house,

and/or play with the neighbors' teenage boy's remote control:

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The most exciting thing that has happened in the past two months? The birth of our dear friend Noe's little brother Logan. Noe is going to marry Sava; therefore, Logan is Sava's brother-in-law! How nice to know one's future family from childhood.

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Just in the past few months, Sava has suddenly blossomed into a full-time independent reader. We still read together every single night, but more and more often, in pauses between activities, or as a way to escape his sister, he does this for extended periods of time.

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Sava loves his bike as much as he likes fishing, woodworking, running, swimming, and the National Geographic for Kids. We've had only one long ride since our return, but another is in the works for the coming weekend.

He'll ride, stop, look, then ride again.

We'll find the occasional hawk along the way.

While he and I ride several miles from one of the Google offices to Shoreline, sister and tata scooter a shorter route, ending up at the boat playground at Shoreline.

She's not into long distances...yet.

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Lastly, I'll have to somewhat disappoint those of you who come here exclusively in order to read Stuff They Say.

Hearing their gems is my favorite part of living with kids, too, and this month we seem to have mildly failed in the attempt to write things down in places from which we can recover them.

finally toothless on top!!!

I could have sworn Rado wrote down a few things on his phone, which he now claims he never did, and I know that I wrote down a few gems on random scraps of paper that in the minor clutter of our house seem irrecoverable. I do know that once, musing about having just earned the privilege to bring something to share with math class, Sava said with a sigh:
I wish there was a bring-your-gun-to-school day. Plastic nerf gun, that is, which is why I can write this on here.

Rado also reminds me something from our Bulgaria trip that I forgot to write down in the last posts. One day, waking up from a rare nap in the car, Raya heard Sava remarking that he wasn't feeling well. He was car-sick. Eager to jump into the conversation, but still half-asleep, she said in a half-stutter:
Mommy, my TOE is dizzy.
Her toe is dizzy.

Also, from the back of a check that must pre-date the Bulgaria trip:
Rado (during a hike): Would you guys like to work as rangers? Show people around and take care of the park?
Sava: No. I like being a kid.

And from that same ancient scrap, a reminder of one occasion when Rado told Raya that she "may want" to walk with shoes rather than barefoot on wooden chips that were likely to give her splinters.
Sava to Rado: Don't say to her "you may." Say "you will."  

hiking with her "best" friend from preschool; they walked the entire two miles HOLDING HANDS.

I have a few more from Raya, but I am saving those up for her birthday post, coming up in about two weeks.

Until then, happy fall, everyone.