Life in Amherst

Parent's Day at Holiday Hill Camp

Some great pictures from Parent's Day at Ella's camp.  This camp has been really great for Ella.  The bus comes directly to our house at 8:30 in the morning, and then she gets to spend all day playing games, swimming, singing, dancing, and doing art, all in a beautiful outdoor setting.  The kids are exhausted at the end of the day when the bus drops them off at 4:30.  The camp costs an arm and a leg (literally), but I can see that its worth it.  Maisie was too young to go this year, but she'll be eligible to go next summer, and I can't wait for both girls to be able to get on the same bus and go to camp together!

We were also lucky because both mom and Howie got to come to Parent's Day, so Ella had a parent or grandparent with her the entire day.  The camp served the most spectacular lunch for all the parents and campers--delicious fried chicken, corn on the cob, clam chowder, and some great fruits and vegetables.  It was absolutely delicious.  Mom and I got to spend time watching Ella play soccer, hold lizards (!!), and take swimming lessons.  What a wonderful day!

Ella and her counselor, Stephanie, and her cabin-mates.

Grandma and Ella.

Ella in a staightjacket being attacked by lizards!

Ella and her counselor-in-training (Katie) and cabin mates

Swimming Lessons

My favorite thing to do in the world

Ella asks all kinds of really good and thought-provoking questions.  Among them are:

1.  What is the very last number in the world?
2.  Is black a color?
3.  Who was the very first person on earth?
4.  What's next to China?
5.  What was the very first toy in the world?
6.  What is your most favorite food in the world?
7.  Who are your favorite people in the whole world?
8.  How is dirt made?
9.  How is glass made?

Each of these questions is quite thought-provoking, and she usually asks me these questions when I'm driving, which gives me pause while I'm driving to try to think of the right answer.  She's a fabulous asker-of-questions, though I often have no idea where she gets her subject matter.  Worse yet, I often don't have the answer.

The other day, she asked me what my favorite thing to do in the world was.  Of course I had to say that spending time with her, Maisie, and Kim was my favorite thing (which is mostly is).  But I also started to think more carefully about the answer to this question.

After some thought, I decided that my favorite thing to do in the whole world was trail running.  Though I've run competitively on some level for over thirty years now, running on the roads just doesn't satisfy me anymore.  I would much prefer to be out in the middle of nowhere, exploring trails I've not been on before, and trying to understand how trail A may (or may not) hook up with trail B.  Fortunately, I was born with the gene to understand where I am without a map, and always seem to understand what direction I'm heading, even if I've never been on a particular trail before.  

Today was a perfect example.  I finally headed out to the trails around 4:00, with the intention of staying out running until around 6:30.  I was able to (finally) figure out how two trails I'd run on from opposite directions joined up, and ran out on the trail for about an hour and a half before turning around and heading home.  It was an amazing summer evening on a really beautiful trail, and I'm feeling pretty good that I can run for several hours without really getting tired.  I came home after running for about 2:20 and really felt great. 

So, I'm certain that's my favorite thing to do in the world.  What's yours?

In other news, our new deck is finished, and Kim did a beautiful job staining it today.  Just one more coat of stain and we're ready for the new hot tub!

Ella swimming in her gymastics outfit.  She certainly has a gymnasts' body!

Maisie, causing trouble.

Ella's picture of Maisie and I.

Howie and Ella (Maisie refusing to participate).

Me, as pseudo-stay-at-home parent

I can't remember a time since I've had both girls that I've spent so much time with them in the course of a regular 'work' day.  From the time Ella was six months old, I would march off to work around 8, drop her off at daycare, and be at work by 9 at the latest.  Then, I'd work all day, and finally leave at 5 (definitely on the early side, in the big scheme of things), and pick her up.  Its been the same with Maisie.  That time has been pushed back at least an hour since we've had great nannies, so often I don't get home until 6.

Because Amy is up in Massachusetts this month, and because Kim is no longer around to help with drop-offs or pick-ups/comings home, and because I've been teaching at Yale for the past two weeks, my schedule is really completely different.  On non-teaching mornings, I really don't arrive at work at least until 9:30, and though I've hired somebody to come by a couple days/week, I often leave work around 3:15 to pick up Maisie so I can meet Ella's camp bus at 4:30 (as it turns out, they won't let her off the bus without a parent.  The other day I was two minutes late and the bus left, went and dropped off some other kids, and then swung back around 10 minutes later.  The driver was none too pleased).

So, taken together, I'm the home frau.  Sometimes I'm good at it, and often I'm not.  Mostly, I feel like I'm the disciplinarian who is always telling the kids all the things they shouldn't be doing.  Most of what is driving me nuts about them is how much they fight, constantly.  Sometimes an hour or so goes by without them fighting about something, but this is rare.  Today I made a new rule:  whenever they fight, they must go immediately to their rooms, and not come out until they can apologize to each other, and walk down the stairs holding hands (where I shall be patiently waiting on the couch).  The other part of it is that if they fight twice, they lose their TV privileges for the night.

Tonight, they lost TV privileges.

I also do an enormous amount of laundry.  I do mountains and mountains of laundry every night.  Part of this is because Ella goes through a lot of towels, swimsuits, etc at camp, and I need to wash her camp uniform every day.  Maisie also goes through a lot of laundry, and with Kim and I upping our summer workouts, there are also lots of sweaty clothes.

So, house frau I am.  Its been fun, and despite the fighting, I do enjoy spending time with the kids, even if I am the most unpopular mother in the house on most days.

Birthday Weekend in New Hampshire

What an amazing weekend we had together.  Kim signed up for a three-day triathlon in New Hampshire (appropriately called the Black Fly Tri).  The event(s) consisted of a Friday night time trial (4 mile sprint on bike), a Saturday morning 'international' distance triathlon (0.5 mile swim, 20 mile bike, 5 mile run), and a Sunday morning 'sprint' triathlon (0.25 mile swim, 25 mile bike, 3 mile run).  Though it took an insanely long time to drive up to Waterville Valley Ski area (northern New Hampshire--about 4.5 hours away from New Haven), we arrived mid-Friday afternoon and had a couple of hours to bum around before Kim's first race.  It was a great set-up--we rented a two bedroom condo in the ski village, so we had plenty of room to spread out and the kids loved having their own bedroom with bunk beds.  The 'village' was cool in that the hotel was right next to the pond where the race start was, and where the swim took place.  The village also had all kinds of restaurants, some coffee shops, a small grocery store, and a toy/book shop, so there was no need to drive the car anywhere all weekend.  It was heaven.  We could also rent canoes, kayaks, and paddle boats, and on Friday night when Kim was out racing, I took the girls out for a paddle boat ride, and we had a great time together.

Kim did so well on all three events that she placed third overall in her age group.  For that, she got a jug of maple syrup!  She has always been a great triathlete, and despite taking a few years off for kids, she has returned in excellent form.  I am totally proud of her--she's an amazing athlete.

As for the rest of us, we had a great weekend, too.  Saturday was my birthday, so Kim arranged for the kids to attend a short day camp for a few hours in the morning while she was competing, so I headed out to the mountain trails for a run.  I ran for about two hours up and around the ski slopes on Saturday, and then looped back around to join Kim in the final miles of her running leg of the triathlon.  Though I didn't anticipate running today, I was able to head out for another hour or so, and had an amazing run on some cross-country ski trails.  After these two days of running, I'm feeling much more confident in terms of being able to do another ultramarathon in September, though I still have a lot of work to do to get here.

The cool thing about our weekend at Waterville Valley was that there were tons of families there, and lots of parents were there competing in the triathlons while their kids cheered them on.   The kids loved the atmosphere, and I think its a good and healthy thing to expose them to.  We got to spend a couple of hours on Saturday was my dear friend Kris and her cool kids, who live just an hour north of the race.  We also met a couple of cool lesbian families who were also there competing in the triathlon, and one of the families lives just a few miles up the road from us here.  I'm hoping we can get together with them, and their kids, sometime soon.

It was a really incredible birthday weekend-probably the best on record, as far as I can remember (of course, I'm 39 now, so who knows how my memory is holding up)...

Kim and the girls before before her Saturday triathlon:

Maisie and Ella in the paddle boats:

Running in the New Hampshire mountains.  I did a ton of climbing and got some really gorgeous views.

Summer

Not much to add to my previous post, except to say that despite my totally unusual schedule this summer, I'm really enjoying summer so far.  I am teaching on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at Yale until 11:00, and then am taking the rest of those days to work at home.  So, because I'm not going into work at all those days, I'm getting the opportunity to pick Maisie up from school around 3:30, and then I get to be home when Ella gets off the camp bus.  Its been fun to hang out with them on late summer afternoons, as we've taken ourselves out do dinner, enjoyed (what little) warm weather we've had, and generally just gotten to hang out with each other without being rushed.  On Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays, we've been having a substitute babysitter come and pick Maisie up at noon from daycare, bring her home or to the pool, and then meet Ella off the bus.  If I completely wanted to blow off all work this summer, I would eliminate that babysitter and just work from 9:30 (when I finally get Ella on the school bus and Maisie at daycare) to 3:00 (when I need to leave work to re-pick up Maisie and meet Ella's bus.  However, I've got a couple of papers close to completion and a grant that needs to be re-written, so I do need to do some small degree of work this summer outside of class preparation.

Regardless, the girls seem to be having a good summer.  Here's them, and a neighbor, this afternoon, enjoying their 'water slide' (i.e. a garden hose attached to their playscape slide).

Happy 4th of July!

First, happy 4th of July!  We took the girls to watch their first-ever fireworks last night on the beach, and they absolutely loved it.  I am not generally a big fan of fireworks (too loud, too late, too many people), but we had a really marvelous time.  I am not wild about my neighbors shooting off incredibly loud and scary fireworks in their yard as a I write this, but I did have fun last night.

Once again, I've been thinking a lot about whether to continue the blog.  I'm having a harder time finding time to write, and I'm not even sure I've got great subject matter to write about.  The kids are doing well, Kim and I are doing well (though the house has still not sold), our jobs are going well, and generally things are great.  The blog seemed so much more relevant when the kids were really young and parenting was new and difficult.  Now, it seems like we're almost old hands at parenting, and parenting itself is much more of a joy than it is a challenge.

So, I apologize for the relative silence over the past few weeks, but the blog doesn't seem as relevant as it used to.  I'll leave you all (that is, all 16 of you), with a few updates, and then will think carefully about whether or not to continue.

• Ella is thoroughly enjoying her first summer camp experience.  A bus comes and picks her up around 8:30 every morning and drops her back off around 4:30.  While she's there, she does everything imaginable:  boating, cooking lessons, swimming twice/day, and endless sports.  She's exhausted when she comes home, and I'm delighted she gets to spend the entire day outside.
• Our wonderful nanny, Amy, is taking the month off to work at a summer camp in Massachusetts, so we're more or less without a babysitter (though I did speak with a college graduate who will work a couple days/week).  The girls miss her terribly, and in some ways I feel like we're limping through the next few weeks until Amy can come back and brighten the girls days again.
• Maisie is in a summer camp, of sorts, at her regular daycare.  None of us are completely wild about this, but its a reasonably good place and she knows everybody there, so its fine.  I'd just prefer to be at the park or the pool or somewhere outside.
• I had a very interesting conversation while I was in Chicago last weekend with somebody I greatly admire and respect.  We were comparing our daughters (hers is in high school) and I was telling her that Ella had done well enough in kindergarten, but also struggled to keep up, a bit.  She said that the best thing she could have ever done for her daughter (but didn't) was hold her back a year (so, repeat kindergarten).  One of the reasons it would have been nice to move to Amherst would have been that we would have had no choice but to have Ella repeat kindergarten because of age restrictions.  Now, if we stay, I'm wondering whether we should advance Ella to first grade or have her do kindergarten again.  I just still feel quite badly about all the pressure she felt at the end of kindergarten, and her self-consciousness about not being in the same place as the other kids.  I'm just wondering whether we can save her some years of struggle if we make this decision now?
• Work is going extremely well.  There are so many great things happening with my research that I can hardly believe it.  Way too much to go into here, but all is good.
• Kim loves Amherst, but feels badly about being gone during the week.  Damn house that's not selling.
• In the past two weeks, I've been in New York, DC, Boston, Provincetown, Long Island, and Chicago.  Next weekend we're heading to New Hampshire for Kim's triathlon, and about a month later, we're going to Montana for a family reunion.  That's a lot of travel in not much time.

Those are the big highlights.  We're all good.