or how i learned to elevate the mundane

I find myself with President’s Day off for the first time ever. The Girl wanted to go to the park. It’s a nice, sunny day out. I can see summer if I squint hard enough.

Every 2 years I sit back and enjoy the spectacle of sport that is the Olympics.  I have a slight preference for the Summer Games, but there are many events to enjoy in the Winter Games as well.  Certainly enough to keep the TV/DVR busy.  This year, my boy is 7 and he has really taken to the spirit of the games as well.  During the last Summer Games, he was 5 and he participated in Michael Phelps mania with his parents (he loves to swim and has been swimming solo since he was 4 yrs old), but he wasn’t really into the games as an event.  Well, this time he is as into it as I am, and possibly more.  It’s really gratifying to sit on the couch watching ski jump and hearing him provide commentary on how good various athletes’ take-offs were and then watching him get excited as they land (e.g. “Oh, I think that was a good jump! He’s probably #2 or #3!).  I think for us non-Olympians it’s part of what the Olympics are about.  It brings the world together at a macro level.  And this year, it has provided another way to bring our family together at a micro level.

Due to last week’s Snowpocalypse here in Seattle, the streets before Christmas were essentially unpassable.  UPS and Fedex had a particularly difficult time getting packages delivered, which resulted in a number of Christmas presents not being under the tree on the 24th/25th.

We made do with the Santa gifts by me going out and buying one more gift each for the kids.  So the “Santa Crisis” was averted, but only just barely.  Thankfully, the kids seem to like their replacement Santa gifts.  However, the gifts from us and my parents hadn’t arrived by then, as did various gift packages from my wife’s side of the family.  Some of those arrived on the 27th, so we ended up with a second Christmas then.

Since then, packages that should have been delivered a week ago have been trickling in and a FEW HAVE NOT YET BEEN DELIVERED.  It’s basically been a full week since Christmas and a good 4 days since the roads have been totally cleared.

The city plan for snow has been a total disaster.  And it’s almost acceptable NOT to have a plan in place for a situation like this, but what is NOT acceptable is to not put an emergency plan together that takes action when a situation like this occurs.  This is not about Christmas gifts (though, that is not a trivial issue where kids are concerned), this is also about city services, public safety, and now with the garbage piling up, public health.

So we said goodbye to my in-laws today after a nice Christmas visit.  Little did they know that they would be snowbound for almost an entire week!  We’ve now got a day and a half of downtime before my sister and her family come into town for New Year’s.  This year, our kids will be 6.5, 5, 3.5, & 1.5 years old, which should make all of them fully interactive.  Unfortunately for them, they will have missed all the snow (so no sledding down the street).  Although, come to think of it, maybe they don’t mind after having survived a few Boston winters.

You are all no doubt aware of the amazing amount of snow the Seattle area has had over the past week.  It all started with the ominous NoSnow Day on Wednesday, December 17th where all the kids in Seattle were told to stay home due to the threat of snow.  My son declared it “The Worst Snow Day Ever”.  It may very well have been.

But that’s all been made up for starting on Thursday.  The snow has been AMAZING.  It has gotten so deep and so pervasive that the street we live on is now suitable pretty much only for sleds.  The kids have been using the street as a sled run for the last 5 days:

It has been a blast, I have to say. The street is at just the right slope as to make the sled run fun but not “too exciting”, if you know what I mean.  Also, one of the neighborhood kids created a little sled jump for that little added adrenaline rush for that run down the hill.

On top of all that, on Saturday night we had what was probably something that could only happen in the PNW (although, I will concede that it’s possible in areas of the South with little snowfall).  We had a neighborhood block party!

And it was pretty much an all-out block party including the obligatory barbeque (sausages, etc.), plastic lawn furniture, wine and champagne, milling about, and kids doing their own thing.  It was as surreal as it was totally amazing to have the neighborhood out there enjoying the snow and acting as if it were the middle of July except that it was 25 degrees outside.  Plenty of fun, and good neighborship to be had.  And the kids were maxed out to boot.  Within minutes of them getting into bed, they were out cold.  The perfect end to a perfect evening.

Our little guy lost his first tooth on Thursday night. It was quite an event. Naturally, we discussed the impending arrival of the tooth fairy. We wondered how the tooth fairy knows which kids have a tooth under their pillows (via the teeth sending out magic fairy dust), and how she was able to make all of the visits, etc.

It was at the same time a very logical and scientific discussion as well as a totally fantastical one. Kinda funny, actually.

So on Friday morning, he woke up and found a whole dollar left for him. He totally bought into the whole spiel, which for me is both very cool and slightly disappointing.

But this time in kids’ lives is so short and terribly precious, and I know there will come a time where I look back wistfully on this time and wish it were still here.

So, here’s to the tooth fairy! And may we enjoy many more visits.

Kids got advent calendars from grandma. I never did these as a kid myself, but the kids enjoy them and think they’re fun.

As a parent of a 2 and 5 year old, I go through the entire gamut of emotions nearly every day.  Children have a way of affecting you like no other power on Earth, but I have to say that a couple of things really stand out.

The first – and most clearly the best – feeling a parent gets from their child is an enormous sense of pride and love as they learn and grow and accomplish things for the first time.  These highs are pure joy, even for little things like drawing a recognizable face – complete with almost-round head, 2 eye-like things in roughly the right place, and a line or oval-shaped thing for a mouth – for the very first time, to more technically accomplished things like riding a bike without training wheels.

The other feeling is the most incredible, deepest heartbreak that you’ve ever felt because your child is/has experienced pain or sadness or frustration in his or her life.  The feeling a parent gets is overwhelming when your child is him/herself in pain either physical or emotional.

Over the last several days, I’ve noticed a story that’s been unfolding with someone whom I really only know by face and name, though we share many of the same friends.  Ellen and Matt K. had to let go of their daughter Emma, and I can only barely imagine a fraction of their feelings right now.  As a parent I can almost feel by proxy the heartache, sadness, and rage, but also the deep calm of having their other daughter Ella by their side.

Sometimes it is hard to reflect on a day-to-day basis when you’re dealing with noodles on the floor, tomato sauce on the doorway trim, snot being licked off an upper lip (our daughter’s own,fortunately), or a particularly insistent need to have scrambled eggs for breakfast rather than cereal, that these little frustrations will pass and that there’s another opportunity for joy to be had right around the corner (if nothing else, the immense joy of watching your child sleep), all that on top of whatever highs and lows one might have had at work that day along with any personal stresses stringing you out.  It is all too easy to forget. 

But due to the loose fraternity and sorority that parents share as cohorts and commiserators, it is at these times that we are reminded harshly that all of these experiences are really joys in that we would not trade them in for the alternative.  So, my heart goes out to the Kowalczyk family in this time, and I know that we’ll all hold our kids a little tighter.

Only 7 more shopping days left.  I find my parents difficult to shop for.  It’s not like they have everything already, but trying to find them what’s truly useful but not ‘utilitarian’ can be a fine line.