Easter Eggs!

Sometimes I forget that I am the adult, and that holiday magic doesn't happen, adults plan it.  Which is to say, I'm terrible at celebrating holidays and creating activities and tradition around them.

But I can manage the basics.

Despite easter falling very late this year, the weather leading up to it was, well, abominable.  Dyeing easter eggs is much more fun when it feels springy, but we persevered.

Nadia and Givenson came over, and Nadia and my two girls dyed nearly 3 dozen eggs between them.  These girls were FAST.  Too fast, I think.  We ran through eggs before they got bored with the project.

Nadia's egg kit came with a plain wax crayon, and Clio wrote her favorite slogan on one of hers.

Nap the Cat.

That's right.

We have NO clue what this is supposed to mean or where it came from, but she writes it everywhere.

See?

She also wrote her sisters name on one, and Eleri decorated with stickers.

Eleri also really liked dunking the eggs in the colors.  By which I mean dropping.  We lost a few to this method before she got the hang of the dipper.

A Christmas dress for dyeing Easter Eggs.  Makes perfect sense somehow.

In the end, when we'd run out of eggs, Clio and Nadia did a little experiment called Put the Egg in Every Color and See What Happens.  My prediction?  Brown.

As usual, I was wrong.  They basically turned the last color they were in, with undertones of all the other colors.

I'm getting worse and worse at concluding these posts as the day goes on.  And you know what?  I'm not going to sweat it.

The Meaning of Christmas

On the 8-hour Drive from Morrison to Carbondale on Christmas Day, Dave and I took a vote, which was unanimous: Worst Christmas Ever. This, of course, had to do with Eleri's double pneumonia, with Pete's stomach flu, with the power outages, ice storms, and driving weather that generally looked like this, or worse:


All of which, in hind sight, makes me feel like a complainer, and makes me wonder if we've all kind of forgotten what Christmas is about. My friend Statia was saying at our last Mom's night how much there actually is to Christmas, and how difficult she found it to explain all the elements of this holiday to a kid: flying reindeer, a fat man coming down the chimney, a tree covered with lights, and who is this Jesus character, anyway?

When we were leaving the hospital on Christmas Eve, the staff gathered around Eleri's car seat to coo over her one last time, and to see her off.

Earlier in the day, one of the nurses had presented us with a wrapped present, topped with a bow, which turned out to be a little pink stocking with a tiny teddy bear tucked into a pocket, and the words Baby's First Christmas across the top. "I was at the store last night," she said; "I saw this and thought, 'oh she just has to have it, especially if she's in the hospital for Christmas.'" The gesture was very kind, and as we left the hospital with our baby who had touched everyone in the Morrison Community Hospital, I realized that the first Christmas was, in fact, a baby's, and for many people it is still about a baby who changed the world.

On the pagan side of the holiday, I also found myself thinking about the trope of the Tree. When he was little, Dave nixed the idea of a Christmas Tree (I guess he was an early adopter of the Green movement). This year, when it looked like we would stay in Morrison for Christmas, apart from Barb's parents and brother, with whom she has never, as far as I know, missed a Christmas, Barb and I both had the same idea: we needed a tree. For the first time in nearly 20 years, the Peterson house would have its very own honest to goodness Christmas tree, and we would buck up and throw ourselves a tree trimming party.

In New York, you can buy a tree on the sidewalk outside just about any grocery store or CVS (once when Clio and I passed a lot after school, I told her how good the pines smelled; she threw her whole body into the pile of trees and emerged with the declaration: "YUCKY!"); in Morrison, you either cut down a tree on your own property (Barb's preferred method) or you drive on over to the nearest tree farm. When Dave came home with a tiny little tree in a pot, so it could be planted after the holiday, I was instantly reminded of A Charlie Brown Christmas, where Charlie Brown is sent out, much like Dave, to bring home the holiday centerpiece and, much like Dave, he comes back with a dinky little evergreen.


In the cartoon, Charlie Brown is lambasted for his choice: it is the 1950s or 60s, and brightly colored tinsel trees are all the rage. But of course Charlie Brown's choice is more about love than it is about aesthetics or commercialism, and when his friends all band together to decorate it, the little tree transforms into the largest, most beautiful tree around (at least, this is my memory of the story.) I would say that our tree, hung with the plastic-cow lights that Dave had back in college and photo-ornaments that Clio and Barb made together, was transformed by this same Christmas magic. I don't have an "after" shot, but I'm not so sure the spirit of the tree can be captured.

Of course, the holidays are mainly about connecting with loved ones, and we did manage to get Clio and Eleri some quality time with 4 grandparents, 4 great-grandparents, 1 step-great grandmother, 2 great-aunts, 2 great-uncles, 2 aunts, 2 uncles, a first cousin once removed, and her two cousins. Grandma Barb has retained many of Dave and Derek's original toys and gear over the years, and when she pulled out Memory, the Mommy and Baby animal matching game, I was brought right back to Christmas Eve, circa 1979 or so, when my cousin Christine and I received matching white rabbit fur hats and muffs from our own Nonny and wore them all night with our pajamas while playing the newly minted Memory in the long hallway connecting one end of the house to the other, and I realize that for me, Christmas has always been about cousins.

When I arrived in Minnesota from Illinois, my brothers and their families came to my parents' house for another round of Christmas celebration, and I had the fur-hat flashback again when I took these pictures of Clio and Lucia in their matching tutus in front of our-yes-vintage silver tinsel tree, just like the ones Sally really wanted in A Charlie Brown Christmas.
And while I couldn't find the picture that I know exists of Christine and I playing Memory, I did find these, which tell the story equally well.



And I know that we will remember this holiday in many ways (not the least of which will be a plaque that Pete might have carved for the tree once it is planted, which will read The 2008 Christmas Memorial Tree: It's Always Something), but you would be hard pressed to match the happy photos from the last two weeks with the list of things that went wrong, and I know we will not remember this as the Worst Christmas Ever. In fact, I no longer believe there could be such a thing.

Merry christmas, everyone.

On Making Decisions

Saturday morning, Eleri took a return trip to the Doctor to see whether the nebulizing treatments had worked. The on-call Doctor theorized that she had Bronchiolitis a second time (it's caused by two separate viruses, and while it's not common to get them both, a child with an older sibling and exposure through day care is the most likely supect), and he cleared her for travel.

Sunday morning, she woke up less than an hour before we were scheduled to leave for the airport, and in the scramble of getting our family of four out the door, we noticed that she was "in bad shape" (as I said to Dave), but could attribute it to any number of things: grogginess, the albuterol treatments, etc. At the airport, just before boarding the plane, she had one of those poops that completely blows out the diaper, and we discovered that we had packed spare clothes in the carry on for everyone BUT Eleri. As I stood in the airport holding a feverish baby in a "dress" made from her sister's shirt, and they called us over the intercom, "Petersons, please board your plane," we had to make a decision: should we stay or should be go. It makes me think of that song: "If I stay there will be trouble; if I go it will be double." Or maybe it's the other way around? The point is the same: if we stayed and it was a false alram, we would regret missing Christmas; if we went and Eleri was truly sick, we would regret traveling with a sick baby (and possibly making her worse). In those instants when there is no time to seek help, and no help available (Sunday morning at 10am is not a time to get a quick response from the pediatrician), you simply weigh expert advice against your instincts, and take a gamble.

We got on the plane.

We didn't have seats together (we were booked in 3 seats, and the gate agent said there was "no guarantee" that we would get any together, even when I held the girls in his face, even when I pointed at Clio and said "Really? She's TWO."), and while I sat next to a claustrophobic passanger trying to keep my limp baby out of her way, my little baby who seemed to grow more unlike herself with every degree her body temp raised, I was calculating my plans to find an emergency room immediately on landing in Chicago. Somehow, though, while waiting for the baggage, she seemed to perk up, and Clio even got a few laughs out of her. At the car rental, we labored over the decision to upgrade to 4-wheel drive (total cost: $100) for more time than we'd had to decide abuot flying here inthe first plance, and then, in a white-out blizzard, we proceeded to drive to Morrison, where, it turned out, the power had gone out. Over candlelight in Dave's grandpa's house (his power had gone out more recently and was therefore still warm) we made the decision to call urgent care as soon as the phone lines came back up.

The clinic nurse sent us straight to Emergency, where the attending took one look at her and rendered his diagnosis: pneumonia. The Xray tech was called in and a service in Minneapolis confirmed: pneumonia in both lungs.

After 2 aggressive rounds of antibitoics and ongoing breathing treatments and oxygen, she's doing much better, and is scheduled to me discharged tomorrow morning. While sitting with her in the Morrison Community Hospital, I've had plenty of time to think whether we made the right choice, and whether we would have been better of staying in New York. This thinking is unproductive, and the question is unanswerable, yet I find it impossible to accept that and put it all aside. What would have been different if I had followed my gut and not gotten on the plane? My assumptions were challenged when our regular big City Doctor missed this while the small-town ER diagnosed quickly and confidently; here, Clio has the undivided attention and loving care of her grandparents while Dave and I switch off shifts at the hospital. The hospital itself, while not set up for infants, is full of a kind and attentive staff that has been as creative and flexible as you can imagine. At home, we would have had the ease and comfort of home, but a long commute to a likely crowded hospital, and no one to stay with Clio. Retrieving our luggage would have ben a nightmare, and, of course, we would have missed Christmas.

Although, that's a decision that still needs to be made. Tomorrow, we will need to decide whether to play it safe and keep Eleri home, or drive 6 hours South to meet her great grandmother, Ruth, from who she takes her middle name. Ruth is 90-something and there is the sad but inevitable question of whether she will be here to meet Eleri when we are scheduled to come back for Christmas is two years. When you are trading in emotional capital, how do you measure risk and reward? At work, we sometimes use a "quadrant evaluation" to measure impact against resource- it is a tool that takes you out of your preconceived notions and helps you see a decision from a different angle. But anyway I look at this one, I can't see the right way through.

We make hundreds of little decisions every single day, without even recognizing that we're constantly making choices. The big ones often seem more labored. Sometimes, a big decision is about opportunity; as the saying goes, when I quit my job, I closed one door to open another. But more often, it seems like big decisions are made when you find yourself between a rock and a hard place, and you have no choice but to take stock of the options and do the best you can.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Clio is Thankful for presents; especially holiday packages from Nonny and Papa. This one happened to have many wonderful stickers (the ones above have a Thanksgiving theme) and a color-your-own T-shirt featuring Dora and Boots, as well as some great outfits for the girls.

This photo does nothing to capture how Clio actually felt about the shirt. In fact, she took it off a few minutes ago, stating "I'm going to color Dora and Boots AGAIN." In fact, she colored the back of the shirt.

Thanks, Nonny!

Trick or Treat, Brooklyn Style

I have great memories of trick or treating in my suburban midwestern neighborhood. By the time we were in upper elementary school, we were allowed to go on our own, knocking door to door in a 1950s neighborhood of low-slung ranch houses, really and truly named Friendly Hills. I remember my college roommate, born and bred in Manhattan, telling me about trick or treating door to door within her high-rise apartment complex; to me, this was just unfathomable: half the excitement of Halloween came from the chill in the air, and that very particular smell - something like a bonfire of burning leaves - that would be completely lost indoors.

In Brooklyn, there aren't enough houses to go door to door, but most people don't live in large apartment complexes either, so kids trick or treat at the local businesses along the main commercial thoroughfares of 5th and 7th avenues.

Here's Clio exiting the Polish grocery (at 500+ varieties, they boast the most types of beer in Brooklyn!)

And here I am outside of, well, another Polish grocery, this one with lots of sausages in the window.


We also got treats at newsstands, coffee shops, laundromats, and the wine store. Here's Clio with Margo and Lydia, outside the health food store where we tried to corral them, somewhat unsuccessfully, into one shot. (Lydia's mom Liz claims she got it, so we'll see if I can get those from her to post.)


Dave and I were a little worried about the candy factor, and spent a long time last night discussing how to deal with it. Clio has never had candy, and while we both feel two is a bit young for it, I just hate the idea of putting her in a situation with lots of other kids where she's the only one who can't have something. But it worked itself out. The health food store gave out apples, natch, and Clio could not have been more thrilled.


At Has Beans, one of the local coffee shops, the barrista told me that Clio said "Happy Treat!" mixing together the days two main salutations, Happy Halloween and Trick or Treat. Getting an evening of family time with lots of friends was a happy treat indeed.

Happy Halloween!

Today was a very big day. To get Clio prepared, I ran through our itinerary last night before she went to bed. She made me repeat it again and again, and remembered the whole thing today. It went something like this: Breakfast, Car, School, Titi's House with the Kids, Home, Package from Great Granddad and Great Bonnie, Bumblebee costume, Playground with Lydia, Trick or Treat, party with lots of kids. IT is not generally our strategy to do so much in one day, but Halloween does happen to be my favorite all time holiday (although, I'm sad to report, dressing up myself was just beyond reach this year.)

Clio's school has a no-costume policy. While this makes perfect sense once they explain that toddlers and preschoolers are still working to establish the boundaries of fantasy and reality, and can become easily disturbed by costumes, it felt like a ba-humbug moment nonetheless. Luckily, Nonny had the great foresight to send this lovely Halloween dress (Clio particularly likes the "ghosts upside down") so she was as festive as can be. (It is, once again, coincidence that Eleri fully coordinates with her sister from top to bottom).

The special package from Great Granddad and Great Bonnie had this fabulous orange feather boa, but Clio's favorite thing was the card, which sang Bibbety Boppety Boo every time you opened it. She opened it- and closed it- and opened it- a LOT. Do you notice a theme these days?


Clio was also fond of reporting on their costumes. When people asked what Eleri was, Clio said "she's a pumpkin. She's wearing the pumpkin I had when I was a baby."


Which is true; here she is:


I'll fill you in on the main event, up next.

Father's Day

Poor Dave.

Since I was put on bed rest last Tuesday, he has been working extra hard (to make sure that I am not.) And Father's Day was no exception. He got up first thing with Clio, did breakfast, ran to the grocery store, took Clio to swimming and then a birthday party (in the rain), came home and collapsed on the couch. I did manage to make some lunch for all of us but thus fed, the Daddy got a second wind and got us a new cell phone (good bye, Motorola Startac, c. 2001) sorted the laundry, worked on his motorcycle, bundled us all off to the playground, got Clio home and down for the night, cleaned up the lunch dishes and made dinner.

Meanwhile, I went to the video store to load up on early seasons of Grey's Anatomy (I'm outing myself) and to pick up a copy of Hellboy, the movie Dave really wanted to see. On the way home, I tried to find some frozen fruit bars for this deserving Dad (we had just been reminiscing about getting them all the time in Park Slope).

When I got home, I realized that I had rented Hellboy ANIMATED, which is apparently not the same thing, and because I walked home very very slowly, the fruit popsicles I had bought in substitute for the real froz-fruit were melted anyway.

In hindsight, I don't think poor Dave even got to change his clothes, and spent the day in Saturday's shorts and T-shirt.

Poor Daddy.

I'll tell you this, though. Maybe Father's Day is supposed to be about Father's getting their due, being a little pampered, receiving gifts. For me, this Father's Day just went to prove that Dave is about the best Dad around; Clio may still take it for granted, but I appreciate the devotion and hard work 150%.

10 Happy Things About Mother's Day

In chronological order:

1. Sleeping in
2. Dave's intention to make my favorite sweet-potato pecan pancakes (I got up too late to take advantage, but found pecans toasting in the iron skillet and sweet potatoes in the microwave!)
3. Chocolate brioche and delicious decaf from Colson Patisserie, instead
4. Dad-posse at swim class. (Top, from left: Sylvie and Brian, Dave and Clio, Peter and Zoe, Jay and Dylan; Bottom, Dylan and Clio practice jumping in.)


5. Almost buying the mid-century sideboard I've been eyeing at a local antique store (One sad thing about Mother's day: what an unhelpful a-hole the store's owner was, leading to us not actually getting to buy the thing. Sigh.)
6. New-Orleans style brunch at Stan's: po boys, huevos rancheros, and biscuits with sausage gravy (not even in the same realm as Grandma Barb's, but still good). Here's a picture we took of Clio to show her pictures of Clio as a distraction when we realized that the camera was the only "toy" we had on us

7. Limonciata
8. Watching Dave show Clio how to make those little winged seed-pods that litter the ground this time of year "fly." He's a Dad who knows some cool things.
9. A 2-hour nap on the couch (the back support is so much better than bed!)
10. Hearing my own mom's voice, calling from the Atlanta airport on their way home from Ireland, and hearing Clio say "I want to talk to Nonny!"
11. Actually sitting around and playing with my daughter for a couple of hours- blocks, trains, throwing balls, jumping around, listening to They Might Be Giants Here Come the ABCs (while Dave made tortilla soup AND did the dishes)
12. Having more than 10 things to be happy about on Mother's Day (and only half or so relating to food!)

Going on and Egg Hunt

We were thrilled to have the company of Abe, Amelia, and their parents for Easter brunch. (Okay, so when we planned the brunch it was really intended as a farewell to the Kwongs, who leave us for San Francisco tomorrow, and we didn't realize it was Easter.) Still, it made our day to have a family play date, and we did "set up" an Easter egg hunt for them.

Because eggs for toddlers basically need to be hidden in plain sight, we couldn't prepare in advance. Dave wanted to take the kids out of the room while we hid the eggs, but it turned out to be easy enough to "hide" them right under their noses. They actually did get into it, and eventually found them all- with a little help from their parents, aka the cheering section.



We also didn't have much to put IN the eggs, because none of these kids really eat candy, and my ideas (grapes, raisins, etc.) would have just made a mess. The kids didn't much care- they just wanted to show them off to each other - but Dave got a little creative with one special egg for Clio, nonetheless.