Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Two


We've had a busy December here at the Politrell compound, which partially accounts for the lack of new posts (and the rest of the blame goes to general indolence.) Avery turned two years old at the beginning of the month, and enjoyed her birthday party and cake plus the auxiliary family cake and celebration a couple of days later. As our singing has not improved any since last year, I'll spare you the video clip this time around.


I got a ridiculous amount of satisfaction out of the fact that there were exactly the same number of cupcakes on the cake as there were children in attendance. This was pure serendipity but it appealed to my compulsive side.


Post-frosting euphoria


I couldn't get any of them to look up.

So far Avery's twos have been more terrific than terrible. She has recently begun talking in full sentences (sample monologue: "Where's my purse? Mommy! Where my shoes gone? Where's that chocolate??" Proving that, indeed, children learn what they live.) She and Ethan (mostly) adore each other, and the highlight of her day is picking him up from school with me. Despite our best efforts, she has discovered princesses and prefers to wear a tiara at all times, ideally paired with those plastic feather-trimmed high-heeled shoes that seem to have been produced and marketed for the express purpose of breaking toddlers' ankles.


Pictured here with emergency back-up tiara in hand


She is adorable, clever, and funny and none of us have any idea how we ever managed without her. Especially now that she's definitively committed to the concept that nighttime is for sleeping; that's really sent her approval ratings through the roof.

In Which I Get What I Deserve

Those of you who weren't big fans of my last post will probably enjoy this one... While I was jubilantly composing my ode to change, Avery was wandering around entertaining herself (first indicator of poor parenting) while still clad in the previous night's diaper (second and more incriminating indicator of poor parenting).

In case anyone's ever wondered how long a size 4 disposable can hold out against a 2-year-old and three 8-ounce cups of milk, just know that 14 hours is pushing it, and may result in total failure of the absorbent granule system. When that happens, you can expect to find thousands of tiny piles of over-engineered gel all over your living room, like this:




McCain supporters, I hope this eases some of your pain.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Yes We Can (Bore You With Our Political Musings As Well As Our Home Movies)

I hesitated a bit to publish this here, since this is mainly a place for me to ramble on about my kids and my eventless existence, rather than a forum for my political views (that's what Facebook is for ;-)) But then I figured my 2 readers might actually enjoy a little content for a change.

I was awake at 4-ish a.m. GMT when Senator McCain delivered his concession speech. (I'm linking to the NY Times because I like their format, with the text alongside; also because I am a socialist.) I thought it was inspirational, heartfelt, and deeply moving. I felt like I was once again seeing the McCain I have admired for the past decade, the McCain who was so little in evidence during the past several months. He was quick to suppress the "boo"s that greeted nearly every mention of Senator Obama's name (very poor form, supporters, though I recognize that it's easier to be gracious in victory than defeat). He reminded us of what was most important. He focused on what needs to be done now to improve our situation. I wish this McCain had campaigned this year. I hope he's back to stay.

I was still awake around 5 when Senator Obama took the stage in Chicago and delivered one of the most powerful speeches in American history. This speech will be quoted along with Lincoln's, Kennedy's, Martin Luther King's for decades, probably centuries to come. The fact that it was intentionally written to be that sort of speech in no way detracts from its power- it made the grade. I have not heard a speech of this caliber in my lifetime. If Senator Obama didn't get your vote, I wouldn't be surprised to find that you felt differently (I hope you will go back and give it another chance when the sting of McCain's loss has faded, because it is full of beautiful language and, more importantly, beautiful ideas and ideals that are deeply American), but maybe as you listened you at least got a sense of why so many of us are filled with hope at the idea of an Obama presidency. I didn't say "filled with certainty"- we are filled with hope. We don't think he's a perfect man or will be a perfect president. But we admire him for who he is, for what he's accomplished with this campaign, and he is not merely a symbol, as valuable and stirring as that is. He is an intelligent person who has shown he is willing to listen to other intelligent people, to think creatively, to take a longer view. He is a politician, sure, and he has pandered; he has said and done things I don't agree with, and I expect he will in the future. I don't know exactly what his presidency will bring, and I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that he will be a transformative president. But what I saw Tuesday night gives me hope. I don't believe he won because of the economy, or because of fear of a Palin presidency, or fear of anything. I think he won because he consistently reminded us of what was best inside of us all, and he reminded us to hope. Certainly he set that tone in this speech, and I hope and pray he continues, we all continue, in that vein for the next four years and beyond.

It is shaping up to be an interesting time. Russia woke up Wednesday morning ready to kill everyone's buzz with the news that America is to blame for everything that's wrong in the world. I'm sorry- Russia? The country that for sixty years turned the economy, infrastructure, culture, history and future of everything they touched into rubble, to the extent that nearly two decades on we are still reaping the whirlwind everywhere they set their feet- and after all that their leader said that the COLLAPSE of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century- this is the country that is telling us that WE have ruined the world? Russia, you've lost a lot of things, but I never thought I'd live to see the day when you lost your sense of irony. Yet here we are.

And that's just one issue. It's understandable that we are all a little nervous about what is to come. But over the past couple of days I've seen a lot of blog posts, e-mails, and comments expressing, not just uncertainty, but fear and despair about the future now that Barack Obama is our President-elect. Hey, I felt that way myself in 2000 and 2004, and look how well that turned out... But I hope, and I think I have every reason to believe, that we have a better, more intelligent, more thoughtful man leading us now than we have in a long time (take that "long time" back as long as you need to in order to feel comfortable with it ;-)) I don't think his optimism is unfounded. I love what he said about "summon(ing) a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other." If there's anything that will get us through whatever lies ahead, it will be that spirit. His speech served as a reminder that "God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." Those things will get us through anything that comes our way. I hope and believe Obama's got more going for him than words. Only time will tell. But I love that he's started out by reminding us that we all have to step up our game and be prepared for sacrifices along the way. And I love that he's done it so eloquently. Being eloquent isn't everything, but it's not nothing either.

Let me end with something I think we can all agree on, along with the hope that the sum total of Obama's presidency will be as inspiring as this, one of the most stirring lines from his speech:

"(T)he true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals- democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope."

Friday, October 17, 2008

Karate Kid

Ethan just qualified for his orange belt. Here he performs his kata, the name of which currently escapes me. He really digs the shouting, he's toning it down a bit because he's self-conscious in front of the camera, but he really puts his lungs into it at the rating sessions.


Sunday, October 12, 2008

Indoor Sports (for the feeble-minded)...

This is how Ethan & Avery while away the post-dinner, post-SuperWhy electronic-media-bereft evening hours until bedtime. Ethan made the tactical error of teaching Avery to tickle-wrestle, and at 21 months she has gained the upper hand.


Monday, August 25, 2008

Politrells Go Camping

Lansing was concerned that Ethan was nearing the critical age after which he would no longer be interested in camping, so we headed out a few Saturdays ago to equip ourselves with camping gear. The only tent we have is a 2-man pop-up, so we knew we'd have to upgrade. I have a horror of small spaces, and an aversion to sleeping directly on the ground, so we were looking for something roomy enough for an air-mattress. Given the weather in England, we also wanted space to play in case of rain, and we wanted to be able to stand upright inside. We came home with this:

Which was a little bigger than we'd expected. It's kind of hard to gauge these things from a 3x5-inch diagram. We had a trial run in our back garden, and after unfolding the thing there was some discussion re. taking it back to the store and exchanging it for something a little more understated (and not weighing 60 kilos), but in the end that sounded like more work than it was worth. So if you and 20 of your friends or relatives would like to come camping in England sometime, consider yourselves invited!

Ethan out on the back forty. That's some serious acreage.

Inside the main tent there are 2 4-man sleeping compartments. We put Avery's bed in one of them and our air mattress in the other, made a bed for Ethan, put all our gear inside, and still had an insane amount of floor-space. It was fairly ridiculous for a 2-day trip, but next summer we're hoping to go for a couple of weeks and then we'll be glad to have the room, I'm sure.

We went southwest to Swanage, which looks like this:

It was about a 2 1/2-hour drive, which is nearing Avery's limits of tolerance for the car. She toggles between three modes of behavior on long rides: Fighting the Restraints, Drunken Singing, and Comatose.

Somehow we managed to fill the cargo space for ONE NIGHT of camping.

It was a good trial run and because it was sunny it gave us a false sense of optimism and we'll probably go again soon. The beaches down there are gorgeous and also they have thousand-year-old castles to explore, if you're tired of the gorgeous beach.

More photos are here. (yes, I'm now on Flickr, Facebook, and Blogger- inescapable!)

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Viking Bay

Last week Lansing took a couple of days off and we took advantage of the rare sunny weather to fit in some day trips. We spent a day up near Ramsgate, at Viking Bay beach in Broadstairs.
We got a few decent snapshots from Lansing's phone. It was one of the warmest days we've had this summer, maybe close to 80 degrees. The water, however, was probably in the mid-fifties, but the English are undaunted by cold water and plowed right in. Maybe one day we'll acclimate enough to join them.

The kids had fun in the sand and at the mini-carnival there on the beach.


Avery has recently discovered Magnum bars; for some reason we thought it would be a good idea to give her one just as we were getting into the car. We used to have a no-eating-in-the-vehicle policy, but now it's come to this:

Could that hair be any messier?

A Magnum bar is nothing if not huge and melty, and eventually most of it slid down her arm and pooled in her lap, at which point we sluiced her down with a few baby wipes and headed for home.

The next day we made an ill-advised foray to Windsor Legoland (ill-advised because apparently most of southeast England had the same idea.) We got off on the wrong foot because in my haste to download driving directions and get on the road, I ended up printing out directions to Windsor Castle, and only realized my mistake as we were pulling up to the queen's front door. It was kind of like that Jack Handey scenario about taking the kids to a derelict warehouse and telling them Disneyland burned down. Ethan's fury mounted steadily as we proceeded to lose our way and wound up driving through Eton, at one point interrupting a wedding procession. It was not our day. But we got there eventually.

Somehow we only ended up with one photograph:

Avery germing it up in Duploland.

The kids really enjoyed it though and we didn't actually spend too much time waiting in lines; also, it did not rain on us, which always feels like a major victory here. I have to say, though, they have some of the worst food I have ever eaten, anywhere. And bear in mind that I have dined in train stations throughout eastern Europe, so that's really saying something. In the end we really had no choice but to declare it another Ice Cream for Dinner night.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

More Bad Parenting

These pictures are from a few months ago, too. After a morning spent fruitlessly trying to clean the kitchen while Avery climbed my legs and begged me to read to her, it finally occurred to me that she might give me a couple of minutes' peace if I brought the play kitchen in and let her fill up the sink with water. Poor Ethan, he was never allowed to have any kind of messy-play fun, because of my abject horror at the thought of cleaning up another mess and my failure to understand that wiping up water requires nothing more than an ordinary bath towel and 30 seconds of your time. I know, I'm slow. Anyway.

She enjoyed herself enormously, and I got her to wash a lot of the toys, too, so everybody was a winner. Here she is bathing her doll:

I promise we don't bathe her like this.

After a while she decided it was her turn:

She actually managed to wedge herself in there, but unfortunately the water was really cold by that time, and she was rather unhappy about it. I know, baby, some things SEEM like such great ideas at the time, but then it all goes terribly wrong. Happens to me ALL the time, and not only in the kitchen.

Cruel parent that I am, I took her picture before going to rescue her.


Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Finally, Wedding Pictures

So it only took me 2 months, but here are a few photos from Kristin & David's wedding. It was a beautiful day, beautiful bride, and we wouldn't have missed it for anything!

Here's Kristin after the ceremony, in the gorgeous dress her friend Emily designed and made. Not the best lighting, I know; we were both standing in the shade because it was so hot.


Here she is with John & Carlos, and David is in the back somewhere.


And finally, one with the whole family.

I didn't get as many pictures as I wanted to, because Ethan & Avery were desperate for some shade and some lunch, so I can't wait to see all of hers. Lansing kept the kids outside during the ceremony, and from what I could tell Avery managed to pick most of the flowers on the grounds and trample the rest. Here they are in a rare cooperative moment:


We were lucky enough to be able to stick around for the 4th of July too; our first one in the US in 5 years. We took the kids to a parade, which kind of mystified them. We had to skip the fireworks though, since our flight was early the next morning.


Avery celebrates Independence Day in the traditional manner, with a tantrum.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

What Passes for Milestones Around Here

We spent a few days at one of the CenterParcs in May; for reasons I can't explain (because I don't know, not because they are too horrifying to explain) I didn't get many pictures. But on our final day I managed to snap this one of Ethan calmly coloring while we awaited our food at the Pancake House. This is a milestone for 2 reasons: 1) I never believed I'd live to see the day when Ethan would sit quietly in a restaurant like an actual human being and 2) nor did I think he would ever voluntarily choose to color, and furthermore to color inside the lines, filling all the white space, rather than inscribing each page with a single cursory scrawl and calling it a day.

His lack of coloring aptitude was problematic only in that it so concerned his kindergarten teacher that he was referred to physical therapy, where he spent many hours resentfully tracing patterns while grinding his teeth into powder, and many additional hours complaining about how much he hated the therapy sessions. (His therapist also drove me insane, insisting that he was right-handed and we must encourage him to use his right hand...see photo above, notice which hand he's using? The child does not so much as pick his nose with his right hand - sorry for the tmi- and he never has.) Fortunately the next year his teacher was herself the mother of 3 boys, and confined herself to observing, "He really hates coloring, doesn't he" with no mention of therapeutic remedies.

And here we have Avery with her first pig-tails (cute bows are courtesy of my friend Heather, check the link if you have a child in need of adorable hair decor!)


Next up we have a lesser-known milestone: Avery trying to produce her first urine sample. What, you don't have a page for that in your baby book? She was running a fever for a few days and when we couldn't find any other explanation the doctor suggested I try to bring in a clean-catch sample to check for a u.t.i. Oookaaay... so I put her on the mixing bowl in front of the tv for half an hour, nothing- then foolishly turned my back for 2 seconds to grab the remote control and she sprinted over to the couch and left her sample there. That's when I decided she was probably fine and we'd give the fever another day or two before making a second attempt. Fortunately she was back to normal the next day.


This last one is not a milestone per se, but it was cute. Ethan & his friend Dylan created these Iron Man costumes out of the contents of the recycling bin, plus a Super-Soaker and a defunct light-saber.



Coming soon- pictures from my sister's wedding! Assuming I remember the camera.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Bad Parenting

I'm a little concerned about Avery's maternal instincts, or maybe it's my own parenting skills I should be worrying about. This morning I was folding laundry when she came in with a couple of dolls and tossed them into the washing machine.

She had trouble getting the door to close, because the baby's toes were in the seal. After a few tries, she gave a disgusted sort of sigh and took off, pausing at the door to reassure them with "Bye! Yuv yu!"

"Whatevs. I'll be back later. You'll be fine."

"No need to call CPS, they like it in there."

Eventually she retrieved them, and shoved a sippy cup in each of their faces in turn, so she wasn't completely negligent.

Caught by the paparazzi. Makes Britney look like Mother of the Year!

In all fairness, she likes to climb in there herself, so she probably thought they'd enjoy it too. She's forever putting things into the washer or dryer-- food, coins, PlayMobils. Very important to do a quick sweep before you turn on any appliances in this house.

Day Trip

We finally got lucky and had a rain-free Saturday, so we headed down to Brighton for the day. It was perfect- 70's and sunny. Ethan & Avery collected shells and threw rocks into the ocean, only occasionally dropping them on one another's toes.


We found a playground by the water and let them do their thing for a while. Ethan immediately recruited every child of his approximate height for a soccer match, and Avery kept busy climbing and then falling off of various structures.

I don't know who she's waving at here, possibly the gulls. The tide was coming in and she was curious about the water, so I eventually took off her shoes and socks; she headed straight into the waves but immediately became alarmed, lost her head, sat down in the surf, and needed a full change of clothes.

Actual fish and chips! Try not to get your monitor greasy....


There was a little train that ran along the shoreline. Ethan was offended that his offer to drive was not accepted.

We left mid-afternoon to get Ethan home in time for a birthday party for one of his school friends. After we dropped him off we lounged around at home for a few more hours, reading and ignoring the lawn, which desperately needed mowing. Below you can see Avery, riveted by the classics.

Perfect weekend! There's a bank holiday next Monday, so I think we're going to try to fit in some more road trips.

Friday, March 21, 2008

Lucky Seven


Ethan's birthday was last weekend. Hard to believe our little guy is seven. It seems like just yesterday we were careening over speed-bumps in the ambulance as he made his dramatic bum-first entrance into the world. I'll never forget the expression on his face when they handed him to me- "dubious" is probably the closest I can come to describing it. He glanced from me to Lance and then over at the EMT as if to say, "Seriously? These two?" We've seen that look a couple of times since then, and I'm guessing we will become even more familiar with it as we approach the teen years. All the more reason to enjoy his little-kid sweetness while it lasts. He is at an age where it's possible to have genuinely interesting conversations with him- he is particularly expansive and chatty at bedtime- and we're enjoying getting deeper glimpses into the inner workings of his mind. During one of these discussions a few weeks ago he was describing to me some aspect or other of his grand plans for the future, and I asked him whether he'd come to visit us after he was all grown up and on his own. "Yes!" he said without hesitation- and then after a moment's reflection: "If you're still alive." Nice.

Here are a few pictures from his party- we had it at an indoor-play place as Ethan had quite an extensive guest-list and I didn't think I was up to hosting 18 7-year-old boys without professional assistance.

He opted for a volcano cake this year. I think he would have preferred fiercer dinosaurs, but these were the only ones they had at the cake shop and his plastic ones were not to scale.
Note their cheerful expressions as they admire their nest, oblivious to the fiery death bearing down on them.

I wanted to use a sparkler to get the full volcanic effect, but they are banned at the party place- apparently the sprinkler system is easily triggered and the smoke is too much. So we took it outside in the parking lot for that part.


It looked okay with just the regular candles, too.


While waiting for lunch to be served, the kids decided to do a little table-dancing, confirming my decision to hold the party off-site.

We had to draw the line when the shirts started coming off.


Here's Avery taking careful notes and filing it all away for future reference.

But for her the true highlight came the next day, when she discovered the off-cuts in the kitchen. (you can also see the remains of the volcano in the background.)

I went to put something away upstairs and returned to find her busily cramming fistfuls of cake into her face.


And now on to Easter! I was relieved to see that Easter will not be this early again until 2228, or something. By then it definitely will not be my problem, barring any major medical advances. (I love Easter, I just need a little time to breathe between celebrations.) But we have a yard full of daffodils and the neighbors' tulip trees are in full bloom just outside the study window, so at least it feels like spring. So far the London weather has been a pleasant surprise...

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Just in time for Valentine's Day, I'm taking Shannon up on her challenge to tell the story of how I met Lansing & got engaged. Let me preface this by saying we never actually got engaged, officially- we skipped right over it and just got married. But I'll get to that later.

I first met Lansing in September 1993, when we both entered the MTC, destined for Bulgaria (Lansing) and the Czech Republic (me). Neither one of us made any lasting impression on the other at first sight; it wasn't until a few days later that I took a good look at his name tag and realized his sister Clorinda had been in my dorm during our freshman year (my freshman year, that is, and Clorinda's- Lansing was but an innocent high-school child at the time.) Aside from that, we probably had a few conversations but the first one I remember was over lunch one day; I was joking around with someone else in his group and said something that made him laugh. I am always flattered when anyone finds me funny- I take it as a sign of a discerning mind- so this immediately bumped him up several notches in my personal esteem.

This is a picture we took for his sister. Notice he's doing the "I'm-not-touching-you" thing, though not entirely in accordance with the arm's-length rule.

There were only a couple of other missionaries in his group, so they were in with us for most of the non-language-based activities and we had lots of opportunities to chat and get to know each other better. I couldn't tell you anything specific we discussed, just that we had an immediate comfort level with each other that was unusual for me. As I look back over the pictures of our whole group together it strikes me that he is always sitting next to me, which he informs me was not at all coincidental, but at the time I just wasn't in the "Meet Your Romantic Destiny" mindset and I didn't pick up on it.

Actually in this one he's not next to me- he's at the top, I'm 2nd from the right, standing.

We wrote to each other during our missions, and traded a few tapes (tapes! can you imagine? it was like the Stone Age of communications) recorded over the audio guide to the missionary study program, and we were both guilty of some incredibly bad poetry. (Yes, this is how nerds go about trying to impress one another. Look away, it's hideous.) Anyway, I came home in February and went back to school. He finished his mission in August and called me on my birthday, the first time we'd talked in almost 2 years. A couple of weeks later he was back in Provo, and we went on our first date- a 3-day camping trip to Zion National Park. We met friends at the canyon but drove down together, and by the time we got there I was completely in love. We both had this incredibly strong sense of recognition and being 100 percent at home with each other, which neither of us had ever experienced before. We spent every possible minute together that fall, and went camping a lot, and if you look at our transcripts there is a corresponding huge dip in both of our GPA's.

Here we are on a mountain-biking trip to Moab.

By Christmas, we had started making wedding plans, but due to errors of strategy on my part we made it all the way to the altar without Lansing ever actually proposing. He wanted it to be perfect, and I seemed to have a knack for derailing things at the critical moment, and one way or another it just never happened. So he owes me one!!

We got married on June 25, 1996. It was the best decision I ever made. We are just alike enough to understand each other perfectly, and just different enough to keep it interesting. And just lucky enough to have found each other.