Comparing

Every kid is gifted in their own ways. The more of them that I raise, the more I see that. But it is easier to see when a younger sibling surpasses an elder one, so I wonder how much is just learning something faster because you have the older siblings for an example? I am sure that there are instances where the elder sibling truly excels, but we have to wait 3 years for the younger to get to that age to be able to see it, and by then, parent amnesia has set in. So, I just observe the differences in amusement, trusting that all will end well.

I thought of this phenomena today because John started riding a two-wheeled bike. He has been asking since the weather warmed to have his training wheels off, but I kept putting him off, partly because I just didn't really believe he could be ready. After all, James only first got that bike (with the training wheels) on his fourth birthday (John's age now). He rode it two summers until he reached age 6, when we pushed him to try without the extra wheels. It took several hours, as I recall, with Jeremy running him up and down the sidewalk.

Margaret also had a fairly sedate start, just a few months ahead of James for each milestone. She got the bike as a hand-me-down when she was not quite a bit past 3-and-a-half, rode 2 years with the training wheels, then a few months before she turned 6, picked up riding with two-wheels (more or less) in an hour or two on Grandpa's and Grandma's front yard.  Thus, she was slightly ahead of James but not significantly.



Flashback to May 2010: Maggie and Mom work together on the take-off



This is pretty exciting!

Look at me! I'm doing it! I'm doing it!

Ta Da! Celebrating at the finish line with Uncle Jim.

John, on the other hand, was trying to get onto Maggie's training-wheel-equipped bike before he was yet 2.

John, a stubborn 22-month-old here in April 2009, insists that he is going to ride Maggie's new bike. Tricycle, shmicycle.

We always thought Maggie was strong-willed, until we met John. He did eventually get on the bike.

Oh, Joy! Riding with Maggie was acceptable, but this was what John really wanted.

We finally turned the bike over to John just past his 3rd birthday. Today, just past his 4th birthday, he decided it was time to ditch the training wheels. And he did it. He couldn't wait for Mom to be done nursing Helen, so he headed out on his own. Maggie volunteered to coach him, but within 10 minutes, they were back inside, announcing success. John had done it. (Click here to see the video of John riding today.)

Whoa-ho! I did it!

We see these differences between the kids in other venues, of course. James will never be a kid who cares about spelling, for example. I had to put my foot down recently, however. I was sorting through the last of his 4th grade school papers (finally!) and found a poem about his parents. A very nice poem, but he spelled my name Jeneffer. Really. I began remedial tutoring immediately for spelling my name. He is very capable of learning any word, but it doesn't always stick, and I think it is at least partly because nobody will ever really convince James of why he should care.

Margaret, on the other hand,  loves spelling. That is not to say that she is naturally an A-speller; she has certainly presented some unusual spellings. However, just a year ago, as she began 1st grade, she was barely reading at all. Given that, her spelling has developed remarkably well. She seems to enjoy spelling, including helping James study his list every week and lamenting that she doesn't have more words of her own. The occassional impromptu spelling bee at our house is a touchy affair as she she will generally outspell James about two-to-one.

But again, Margaret can be outshone by John in some areas. I was particularly frustrated yesterday. I sat on the kitchen stool, nursing Helen. Maggie was across the counter from me, asking where to find a particular piece of flatware (the sugar spoon, technically, but it makes a nifty soup spoon for John and she was helping him get lunch). She had the big, wide silverware drawer fully open and I was trying to describe to her in which caddy the desired spoon would be found.

"Maggie, towards the front a bit. No, not so far. Okay, now to your left. Uh, Maggie?" She looked up and gave me a dumbfounded stare.

"Which way is left, again?"

"THAT WAY!" John piped in and pointed correctly, before I could answer. It was not the first time he had demonstrated a more solid understanding of left and right, but it was one of the more obvious ones.


(Although, a more startling example of Maggie's discomfort with right and left came at dinner tonight. Jeremy mentioned something being "draconian," which required some definitions and etymology and Greek history. To illustrate a punishment that was unusually harsh, I told a hypothetical story. "Suppose the government really wants everyone to walk on the right side of the street, to improve pedestrian traffic flow. A draconian approach would be that anyone caught walking on the incorrect side would have his left left cut off." I felt reasonably smug about this example. Then Maggie replied, in all earnestness, "Well, that might be good because then at least you would always know which side was your left or the right.")

Heat Wave

We have had a string of hot days here. They actually haven't bothered me that much, for some reason, but everyone else is complaining. No, we still don't have air conditioning, and no, I still really don't miss it. But Jeremy did choose to sleep on the futon in the lower level of the house last night. (We have discovered about a 5-10 degree gradient between each of our 4 levels.) Helen fussed a bit today until Jeremy laid her down in front of the fan. Then she sighed and promptly fell asleep for a nap. The older kids are enjoying the heat in their own ways.

John rides a 2-wheeler!

John, age 4, asked to have the training wheels off his bike. He marched outside with Maggie as a tutor, and he was off and running about 5 minutes later.

The Urban Jungle

Sunday afternoon, 3:00 PM. Jeremy needed 3 small items from the hardware for projects he is working on:

1) a 15-ft length of chain with quick-link to hang a swing-chair from our tree
2) wood putty to repair the frame of the garage window
3) 1 quart of exterior oil-based white paint to put the finish coat on the garage window

Jeremy decided that a fun way to get these items would be to take John on a "hike" with him to Lowe's. We calculated it was less than 2 miles, so I decided that everyone should go. We slathered on sunscreen, put a few water bottles in the diaper bag/backpack, and changed shoes as desired. We were quite a crew; I wish we had taken a photo. Jeremy had on a ball cap, t-shirt, hiking shorts, mid-calf-height smart-wool hiking socks, and hiking shoes. Jennifer wore a sundress with ankle-high running socks and running shoes. James wore his usual t-shirt, shorts, sport sandals. Maggie was in shorts, t-shirt, flip-flops. John wore bright red jogging shorts with a bright red polo shirt and tennis shoes over black socks pulled up to his knees (they are dress socks but he calls them his soccer socks). I had Helen in the front pack with a big floppy sunhat, and Jeremy wore the mini-backpack.

We started off on our trek. It was pleasant enough for the first half-mile or so, but then we had to walk along East Beltline near the Woodland Mall. This is a stretch where there are 5-6 lanes of traffic, and a sidewalk that is inconstant, to say the least. We walked along heavy traffic for a bit, then dodged into the parking lot of an empty building for a stretch, then crossed the road to/from the mall (a crossing light/button was available, but no sidewalk on either side). Then the walk picked up again for a while, between the busy traffic on the left and the green grass/dwarf landscaping trees of the mall on the right. Of course, it was obvious that the sidewalk for just for appearances; if anyone had ever intended for it to be used, they would not have put a large utility pole right in the middle of it, for example. And then, with no warning, the sidewalk just ended. (No poems in sight.) There was no logical reason for it to end there, like a road or drive. It was just a square of sidewalk, and then grass. (I do wish our adventure pack had included a camera but, alas.)

We eventually found where the sidewalk started again (equally, without reason, from the grass). We got up to 28th St, which is Grand Rapids's answer to strip mall shopping. Every chain in the U.S. is represented somewhere along that street, and nobody walks on it. Lonely bus stop signs are spaced out along it, but often placed in bizarre locations, like where the sidewalk ought to be but isn't, or where the mountains left by the snowplow will be dominating for at least 4 months of the year. So along we came, six of us strolling along in our odd outfits on a dripping-hot summer afternoon.

Jeremy and I enjoyed how conspicuous we must be. I felt sure that we must look like a family whose car had broken down on a country road and we were too poor to call a tow truck so we were walking into town for help, except that we were now far from the country and still walking. The kid didn't seem to entirely realize what a spectacle we were, and instead focused their complaints on having to march in the heat when we could have just driven. We assured them that we were creating memories for them. "This is not just another errand, now, kids, it is an expedition. You'll think back fondly on this when you 're grown."

We successfully arrived at Lowe's (and I will admit that for once, I appreciated air conditioning). It was a good thing that the point of the trip had become the adventure and not the errand, as that proved somewhat unsuccessful.

Chain? Lowe's had only 10-ft lengths (not 15) and had been sold out of the quick-connects "for weeks," according to the clerk ("People have been using them to build swingsets, you know," she offered, as if that explained an inability to respond to this inventory problem after weeks of it.)

Wood putty? Nope, not in stock.

Paint? Well, you can get an interior/exterior combo - your only choice for an oil-based quart. Close enough, we decided.

In the meantime, I of course had to take the kids for bathroom runs, which took us past many other things that they felt they needed to buy. I nixed the 9x12-ft area rugs without hesitation (we were walking, after all, not to mention that our entire house is carpeted).  I assured them today was not the day to bring home a new toilet, bathtub, or bathroom sink. Finally, John (our most avid consumer) decided that life was not worth living unless he could by a little lamp to put by his bed for reading in bed.

Now, as it turns out, this did actually strike me as a reasonable acquisition. No, John can't read yet. But he does have a bottom bunk, which will always be dark. And the boys could use a lamp in their room that they can switch on/off from bed. And this one that John inexplicably fell in love with (a short lime green gooseneck on a stand) was on clearance. But... we were walking home.

"John, why don't we get this a different day, when we have the car along?" No, he couldn't possibly wait. Perhaps he has caught on to the fact that Mom is not too consistent at following through on these future promises. "John, if we buy this now, you will have to carry it all the way home. Daddy and I already have things to carry." No problem, he assured me.  "Okay. But you have to carry it the whole way home!" John proudly demonstrated exactly how he would fit the lamp against his shoulder, just like the rifle of a parading soldier.

Well, I ought to know better by now. If John  gets to buy a lamp, then James and Maggie each need one, too. After additional assurances that they, too, would carry their own lamps, we checked out, spending more than we had planned on and taking with us nothing we came to get. By now, the kids were hungry, so we sat in the wide expanse of suburban sprawl grass provided by Lowe's between the street and the parking lot, in the meager shade of a short landscaping tree, and devoured our stash of granola bars. While we ate, the kids discussed whether we were allowed to have a picnic there since it was not public land. Jeremy used the opportunity to lecture on the idea of the easement and public right-of-way. (Even though we were in fact well inside of that and really just using the vast setback that Lowe's was probably required  to leave by zoning to allow for drainage, you hate to miss an educational opportunity like that.) If we didn't look enough like the country bumpkins come to town for the day while walking across 28th St (where nobody walks), then I expect we did while picnicking next to the Lowe's parking lot.

Unfortunately, the granola bars didn't go far enough with three hungry kids. After all, they had walked a bit, and the time in the store was more than we had planned on, so it was now pushing 5:00. Jeremy and I had a quick consultation and decided to take a different route home. We veered into the mall across 28th St and hit Red Robin for a  full dinner. We trekked in, probsbly looking quite a sight. After all, there were plenty of kids, all of us were hot, sweaty, and oddly dressed. Jeremy informed me a bit too late that my hair was sticking up wildly out of my headband. We had a baby in a front pack plus 3 more kids milling about randomly. In addition to a small backpack and shopping bag with Jeremy, each of the kids was carrying a ... lamp, of course. Jeremy calmly walked up to the 19-year-old hostess and requested a table for 17. He allowed her eyes to get as big as saucers before telling her he was just kidding. Actually, this was a pretty smart joke on his part, because then she actually looked relieved when he said, "Only six."

The last laugh was definitely on us, however, when we got the bill. Three adult meals and two kids' meals. And then both John and Maggie asked for second kids' meals. Ans ate them. The waiter took pity on us and only charged us for one, calling the other just a "top-off" of the mac-n-cheese. Still, a $50 dinner cut significantly into the gas money we saved by not driving the 4-mile-roundtrip to Lowe's.

Outside the restaurant, disaster nearly struck. Maggie's flip-flops broke, entering an unwearable state. Fortunately, "Dad can fix anything." In a truly MacGyver-worthy move, he extracted the safety pin brought to pin Helen's hat brim away from her eyes and fashioned a repair that stood up to the entire hike home.

We chose a slightly longer but lower-traffic route for our walk home. But was the adventure over? By no means. Maggie started things off gently with her question, "Mom, will you tell me about the Revolutionary War and the Civil War?"

"Um...sure. What, exactly, did you want to know?"

"Well, just everything."

"Okay.... Um... How about we pick just one of the wars for today?"

And so, the walk home passed quite quickly as we discussed abolitionism, western expansion, emancipation, bloody battles, European intervention, and more. We arrived home just in time for everyone to cool off with a shower and hop in bed. Not a bad afternoon's adventure, overall. Certainly the stuff that kids' memories will be made from! :)

P.S.
For the record, I looked up our route on Google Maps later... 1.6 miles out and 1.9 miles back, not counting any miles covered running through Lowe's, which might not be insignificant. Given that we were gone over 4 hours, that is not a very impressive pace, but a walk worth taking all the same.

Click here to see a map of our route

Keeping up with Helen (5 months old)

Current most frequently heard sounds in our house:

"Daddy! [Or, insert here "Mommy!" or "Maggie!" or "James!" or "John!" depending on which child is talking and who is nearby.] Come look where Helen is!" This is followed by gleeful and extremely LOUD peals of laughter. This is actually perhaps the favorite entertainment of the older kids - watching to see where Helen will go, and how fast.

We keep a quilt on the living room floor for Helen to play on. The idea is (a) she is on a cleaner surface than the carpet, (b) we have a defined area for her so no one steps on her and dangerous objects are kept out of her way, and (c) when she spits up, the puddles don't soak into the carpet (it is easier to wash a quilt). But since she learned to move a month ago, that quilt thing hasn't been working so much.

She moves by about 70% rolling (over and over and over - and she is quick), 20% rotating (like the hands of a clock, to get a new rolling direction), 10% inchworming (kind of a reverse GI-Jane crawl - arms stay outstretched towards the object of interest while the legs pull up in unison under her tummy and straighten out to push her forward toward the prize). There really is nothing safe and beyond her reach, now, if it is on the floor.

She loves to go for no-nos like books or magazines left on the floor, ignoring that family rule #1 has been, ever since James was this age, "No eating paper!" Her current favorite, though, is actually the fireplace hearth. The vertically placed, 12-inch high, super-smooth, black faux-marble tiles apparently feel really good to lick.  Yuck. Now there is a place it hadn't occurred to me to clean regularly before now.

Next time you come over, you may see our portable crib/playpen installed in the living room instead. I wonder how long it will take her to learn how to climb out of that?

Work, travel, motherhood

We just returned from a week at an academic conference. The American Society for Engineering Education meets for 4 days every June. Every other year, the Christian Engineering Education Conference continues to meet for another 1-and-a-half days at the end. Jeremy and I try to attend every 1-2 years, depending on the various ages of our kids, and whether we have relevant papers to present. It is a good opportunity to share and refresh teaching ideas and to network with colleagues old and new.

We have had the opportunity to visit some interesting places with this conference, although it seems that we always fill the time with the work and don't manage to do the sightseeing we envision in advance. Because of the kids, staying longer or going earlier is rarely an option. Still, these conferences, while exhausting, are always rejuvenating in terms of all the new ideas we come home with. (We have also attended the chemical engineering conferences a few times in November- AIChE.)


Since starting at Calvin we have attended:

2002 Indianapolis - AIChE (18-month-old James came along and we traded watching him and attending.)
2004 Salt Lake City (James stayed with Grandma/Grandpa and we traveled alone.)
2005 Cincinatti - AIChE (Grandpa Tom came along to watch James and Maggie during the day.)
2006 Chicago (Grandma Di came and stayed with us and James and Margaret)
2008 Pittsburgh (Grandma Di AND Grandpa Glen came, staying with James, Margaret, & John)
2009 Austin (Just Jeremy and I went, leaving 3 kids with Grandma/Grandpa)
2011 Vancouver, BC (Jeremy and I and Helen went, leaving 3 kids with Grandma/Grandpa)
So, each year is a new puzzle to figure out in terms of childcare, but thanks to generous grandparents, we have made it mostly work.

This year, I presented a paper, and met with my research collaborators, who also presented two other papers from our work group. Jeremy moderated a few sessions. There are always plenty of sessions we just want to attend/watch, also, so we were busy, from the 7 AM start-time until the 5 or 6 PM end each day. Having Helen along with us, with no one to watch her, was a new piece in the puzzle this year. I wasn't sure how it would work.

As it turned out, it worked amazingly well. For most of the conference, Helen just rode around with me in the Baby Bjorn or Moby Wrap carriers. She would enthusiastically people watch as we walked around the convention center, and during some sessions. Then, I would sit and nurse her in the sessions and she would often drift off to sleep for a long enough period of quiet that I could stay in the room. When she got talkative or fussy, I walked the hallways for a while, or outside along the harbour. When I absolutely needed to attend a particular session, then I handed her off to Jeremy for a few hours, and they took a walk together in the Exhibit Hall. She became quite well-known at the conference. Even at ASEE, with over 3,700 attending, people started to recognize her, and 9 times out of 10, broke into a big grin whenever they saw her walking by. I have never had so many people at a conference smile at me (though it wasn't really at me so much as at Helen).

The tone was set the first  morning as I walked into the main plenary session in the Grand Ballroom, set with a thousand chairs or more. I was a bit apprehensive about taking her into a professional conference. However, Helen was absolutely content and quiet in the back of the room as people streamed in past her. Then it got quiet and dark for the ker, and Helen started to fuss. Embarassed, I wisked her out quickly. But I had really wanted to hear that speaker, so I started her nursing and tiptoed back in. Then, looking for just a bit more privacy, I made a fortuitous discovery. I slipped behind  the floor-to-ceiling heavy black drapes in the back of the ballroom and found that I could still  hear  the speaker. I couldn't see the slides, but Oh joy! I had a fabulous panorama view of the harbour through 3-storey tall glass, instead. Best coference talk, ever!

I relaxed a bit as the first day wore on. Perhaps it was just because that first day, I was mostly attending sessions in the Women in Engineerin Division, with gender-related topics, but Helen seemed welcome. Several  women leaned over to me with smiles to say something like, "Oh, I remember when I brought my baby here; it seems like just yesterday and now he is 20!"



On the other hand, on the 3rd day, we met our friend Laura for lunch. Laura, an acquaintance from grad school, is a professor of chemical engineering and is pregnant with her 5th child. (Her husband is a stay-at-home dad, thanfully.) She has also had to manage travel over the years with children and infants. This time, her youngest is four years old and she was traveling solo. She expressed some surprise that I was trying the conference with a nursing infant, and asked how it was going. She volunteered to me that she had heard people say things to the effect of, "I can't believe that woman is here with a baby!" Laura didn't explain whether this was in the tone of, "Right on, sister!" or "How dare she!" but I decided not to clarify further. Sometimes, it is just better not to know what people we don't know are saying behind our backs, don't you think?



The view from our 9th-story Vancouver hotel room.



Helen did amazingly well with the (lack of) schedule. She nursed and slept for pretty much the entire plane rides to Vancouver- not a peep. We arrived at our hotel at 10:30 PM (make that 1:30 AM for Helen's body clock, due to time change) and she cheerfully went right back to sleep. She slept through each night as usual, waking only to eat, and cheerfully let us rouse her at whatever time we needed each morning. There was only one evening when she had a very minor meltdown at dinner (she wanted to be in a quieter place to sleep); otherwise she just adapted.



Self portrait while clowning around killing time outside a conference session with a talkative baby.



When it was time for my paper presentation Thursday morning, the wife of a colleague from Calvin who was also traveling offered to babysit for an hour. They reportedly had a great time together. When we were in the smaller CEEC (the follow-on conference with only about 35 attendees), I frequently walked Helen in the back of the seminar room, and she was content. She slept about two hours in the arms of another attendee who said he was anxiously awaiting grandkids and loved the chance to hold a baby. Altogether, it was fine to have her there and I think she will be remembered well.



We caught the redeye flight home, which turned out to be a more brutal schedule than I had imagined. It made sense to book it at the time.

PRO: Get home at 9 AM Saturday instead of 6 PM, so we can see the 3 older kids a day sooner.

PRO: Much cheaper flight



PRO: Save a night in a hotel that wouldn't be much sleep anyway since we would have to be awake at dawn for an early morning flight.

CON: Didn't actually get sleep at all, really.

The Vancouver to Chicago flight was only 3.5 hours flight time. So, we started for the airport at 6 PM for our 11 PM flight. (Walk 45 minutes from Granville Island back to our car, negotiate around the Canada Day parade that, BONUS!, turned out to be routed right past the parking garage we had chosen, at just the time we needed to leave, drive 60 minutes to airport, make several detours to find gas station to fill up rental car, return car, find international terminal, discover it is closed for the night, find different international terminal, wait in line for an hour to check in, find dinner at the few open food places in the airport, make it to gate just at 10:30 boarding.) We finally managed about an hour of fitful sleep on the plane, between safety announcements, beverage service, and Helen waking up to fuss and have a very messy diaper. (This was the first time she started to show the signs of so much travel for the week, since she never  has a messy diaper overnight.)

Then in Chicago, we had to claim all our baggage, shuffle through immigration and customs, recheck our bags, go through security again, now with all the early AM airport crowd, and get to our next gate. We waited about 45-60 minutes to board the plane for the last 25-minute hop home. We were very grateful that Glen was there to pick us up as I am not sure if either of us could have managed driving home.

It was wonderful to see the kids again, but I wasn't much of a parent to them that day. While we were gone, they had spent the 6 days at Glen and Diana's house. Their 3 older cousins were there, also, so it was a fun week for all. Grandma's cooking is always a hit. They attended Vacation Bible School at Grandpa/ma's church, which was apparently a big hit. After Glen and Di left our house, I was sitting in our recliner nursing Helen and trying to listen to the three older ones tell me about their week. John was proudly displaying a poster he had brought home from the church program, and I thought I was displaying enough enthusiasm for it until he stopped. I heard a disembodied 4-year-old voice tell me, "Mom? Mom! You need to OPEN your eyes to see it!" Hmm, sure enough. That was the first time I realized they had been closed, I guess I was tired.

That night, Helen showed her one small rebellion for all the traveling and crazy schedules. After eating at 3 AM, she decided she would rather play than fall back asleep. She has really never done that before, and we had taken her through two 3-hour time changes and one sleepless traveling night in one week, so i can hardly begrudge her this. And she was remarkably good natured about it all. She just kicked and fussed until we turned a light on, then she smiled contentedly and cooed to us. She also repeated, several times, what sounded distressingly like her first word, carefully pronounced in a pleasantly mocking, sing-song tone: "Ha-Ha." I think we might be in trouble with this one.

Helen sounds

Things I am learning from my (almost) 5-month-old, Helen:

"Ghee!" is a  happy word.

"GING!" is definitely not.

And cooing, though always adorable, is less cute at 3 AM. Curse that jet-lag.

Happy baby in the hallway during the conference. She was so happy that she started cooing and so I had to step out of the room for a few minutes.