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.

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."

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.

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.

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!)

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.

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.