Talking to Kids about Moving

Anne is generally over the moon about the new house, but in the past week or so, she's started to get a little resistant when we talk about the prospect of leaving our old house. "I like the new house the best," she'll say, "But sometimes I'm going to sleep at the old house, too." When we tell her that that won't be possible because someone else will be living here, she gives us a resounding NO.

It makes sense that she would be a little anxious to leave. James and I love this little old house and the time we've spent here. But to us, it's just a quick drop in the memory bucket, a place among all the other places we've lived, a place where we spent just a little over a year. But to Anne, it is the only home she's ever really known. She was too little to remember our Arlington condo. This house is the setting for the only Christmas she remembers, the only birthday she remembers having, the place where she's played with her friends, all the little moments in between.

We've been trying to do what we can to make the move easier on her. The main thing is that we've tried to move everything else before packing her room. That way, she has a sort of sanctuary amid the chaos of packing that's taken over the rest of the house. We're planning on unpacking and setting up her room at the new house first thing before anything else, for the same reasons.



We've taken a lot of photos of/in the old house during the months we've been here but are trying to snap some shots of the little things about it that we'll want to remember in the future: the plants and trees in the yard, the crystal knobs on the pretty ladderback doors (each one is unique), the funny black-and-white retro tile in the bathroom.

It helps a lot that we've been spending a lot of time at the new house, usually making at least one trip every day for renovation purposes. It's also convenient that the layout of the new house is very similar to the one we're leaving. Thank you, mid-century architects! A.'s new room is coming together, and she's already made friends in the new neighborhood, which has been great for helping to distract from the fact that our time at the old house is coming to an end. But I still find myself crossing my fingers, hoping it all goes smoothly.

Have you moved with your kids? How did you make the transition a little easier? Any strategies you could share would be most appreciated.

Happy Monday!

Pom Poms for Peace

This unassuming mason jar full of pom-poms has become the single-most important weapon in our fight against the Trying Twos, so much so that I want to laugh every time I think of how simple it all is for something so effective. I am sure by looking at the photo you have already deduced how it works -- when A. does something good, she gets a pom, the varying sizes corresponding to the "size" of her acts (a tiny pom-pom for being nice to the cats, a small one for remembering to say please and thank you, a BIG BIG one for resetting her attitude when she gets grumpy or taking a nap without a lot of guff.) Generally once the pom-poms are in the jar they stay there but a couple of times we have taken them away for particularly egregious behavior. When the jar is full, she gets to trade the pom-poms in for a small toy or a special outing to the park or beach.

I liked the thought of Anouk having to really earn rewards, and learn to be patient about reaping the benefits, but I wasn't sure she was old enough to understand the concept of each pom-pom standing for an act of good behavior, or if she would be able to deal with the delayed gratification. But so far, a few weeks in, it seems to be going well. It helps that I printed off a picture of the Sofia the First doll that she chose for her reward and taped it to the side of the jar to remind her what's at stake. It's even gotten to the point where she will do things without being asked, like cleaning up her toys or putting her dishes away, and then come to remind me or James to put another pom-pom in her jar.

How do you encourage your kids to be on their best behavior? Anything that's worked splendidly?

Have a great weekend!

Fun with tangrams

Have you ever heard of tangrams? I hadn't until I came across the concept during a late-night Pinterest session a few days ago but now I am obsessed. Tangrams, which are puzzles made up of seven different shapes that form a square, have been around for thousands of years and used for everything from entertainment in the trenches during WWI to modern day intelligence tests. The gist of the tangram is to look at a silhouetted outline -- of a bird or tree or building, for example -- and to recreate it from the tans, the shapes that make up the tangram.

The pin I found was for making a tangram out of wood, but instead, I used a pack of foam sheets from our craft box. Everybody in the house has taken turns playing with the tangram pieces but I think A. likes them best of all. I'll park her at the front door with a bowl of water (water makes the foam stick to the glass) and she'll play for the better part of an hour, using the tans to freestyle a little art while I do laundry or get dinner on the table. I really love how the tangram forces her how to use an unfamiliar set of shapes to idealize familiar concepts (and some of the designs look pretty cool, too).

(The photos above are, according to A., a daddy, an airplane, and a sailboat.)

Who knew geometry could be so fun? (Besides my h.s. geometry teacher who promised me it would be if I could just give it a chance...)

Happy weekend!

Big Girl Bed

Anouk has been working on outgrowing her crib for a while. A few months ago, she learned to climb over the crib rail, which necessitated all sorts of baby-wrangling on our parts to keep her from falling and hurting herself, mainly involving an XL-size sleepsack, a hair elastic, and a little bit of luck. More recently, she started to show a definite preference for taking her naps in mine and James's bed. It happened so many times that finally, we gave in and ordered her a new big girl bed of her own. It was delivered over the weekend, and so we decided that Sunday night would be Anouk's last night in her crib.

I tried hard not to get teary as I tucked her into it for the last time. I have always promised myself that I won't let myself get too sentimental about Anne getting bigger. Milestones should be happy events, and I don't want to diminish her accomplishments by feeling sad about time passing. I don't want to miss the moment at hand because I'm too busy missing ones that came before.

I made myself make a mental list of all the positives about A. not sleeping in the crib anymore. It went like this:

• She will be more comfortable in the new bed (and thus maybe sleep a little longer in the mornings?) 
• We'll be able to snuggle. 
• Now we can work on potty training, which means eventually no more diapers. (Hooray!)
• I get to redecorate her room to match the big-girl comforter Anne picked out all on her own (I will NOT think about boxing up the little crib quilt I chose before she was born.)

Monday afternoon we put together the bed and loaded the mattress onto it, carefully chosen and tested to ensure it was not too firm, not too soft, but just right. Monday night, we went through our usual bedtime routine and tucked A. into the new bed nice and snug. J. and I spent a long time making sure that she had everything she needed (night light, sippy cup, cat) and then we turned out the lights and closed the door. It took a few false starts, a couple of serious talks in the light of the ladybug lamp, but before we knew it, Anne was sleeping peacefully in the new bed, as though she'd been doing it for months. 

I stuck my head in a couple of times before my own bedtime to make sure she was doing OK. And you know what? In that great big bed, with the duvet pulled up over her, she looked so small. As small as she looked the time we put all five pounds of her in her crib for the very first time. Not so big, actually, after all. Not too big, not too small -- but just right. 

Thoughts on princesses

Sometime around Anouk's second birthday it happened. It was triggered by her first viewing of Shrek, maybe, or the tiny set of Weeble-esque Disney heroines given to her by my Aunt Liz. She added a new word to her vocabulary: "pin-theth," said in a little piping voice. She became aware that there are princesses in the world.

I hadn't exactly been hiding this fact from her, in kind of the way I hadn't exactly been hiding the existence of Barbies. There are a few raggedy-haired leftovers from my childhood in her bunch of toys (so solid and thick-waisted compared to the Barbies of today!) and when she unearths them from the jumble, we play with them. But we don't go digging for them. It was the same with the princesses -- I wasn't consciously trying to steer her away from them, I just wasn't pushing the pink, the gilt, the glitz, the crowns.

But now that A. does know about princesses, there is no going back. She uses the word a dozen times a day at least. "This pree-tee pin-theth dress, mama," and I will agree, it is a pretty dress fit for a queen. But then I will root around in the dress-up box for her stethoscope and lay it next to the iridescent ruffled plastic skirt just in case not doing this sends a message that somehow it's better to be ornamental than useful. Just to remind her that there are options.

I played with princesses growing up but as an adult, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of them. I fully realize that they are innocuous characters but I think that's what bothers me about them, along with the fact that people become princesses simply by the virtue of being born to the ruling class. That's not the lesson I want to teach my daughter about the world. I want her to know that people can change their situations by work, and knowledge, and by looking out for one another. I'm not sure how much a two-year-old can conceive of things like class and wealth and power and beauty and how they all hang together but I do know that at one point as a child I owned the doll that said "math is hard" when you pulled a string in its back. And I grew up thinking math was hard. And boring. And when I had to try to do it, I let myself give up much more quickly than I did with other things. I'm not sure how much the doll (and things like her) contributed to this mindset but just in case it did, I want to be careful about things like this.

So whenever Anouk started talking about princess this or that, I found myself shutting off whatever  other jabbering was going on in my mind and paying attention to the context. And what I found surprised me. "Princess," she would say, pointing to a drawing of Belle in full regalia on the DVD cover of Beauty and the Beast. "Princess," she would say, looking at a drawing of Anne of Green Gables in her puffed-sleeve dress in an illustrated version of the book I keep by my bed. "Princess" -- when seeing a paper doll in a ballerina leotard, Melissa McCarthy standing in tall shoes on SNL, a portrait of my grandma at age 14 hanging over our dining table.

I started to realize that to my daughter, right now, princess just means "woman." Any woman, all women, of all shapes and sizes and colors.  Her understanding doesn't go beyond that. The mailcarrier with beads in her hair, who delivers us packages sometimes, is a princess; the woman with the colorful tattoos who bags our groceries at Trader Joe's is one too. Right now, Anouk's favorite princesses to see in the whole world are Alice in Wonderland, with her frilly white pinafore, and Caillou's mommy, with her soft paunchy stomach. In her mind, every woman is a princess -- simply by virtue of being born.

It's something I hope she'll remember forever.

Spring Cleaning

This week we've been taking advantage of the wonderful weather and are doing a little spring cleaning. We threw the windows up, cranked up the Violent Femmes and have been washing windows, beating rugs, and fitting in a hundred other little tasks that we've been meaning to get to all winter but haven't had the energy to do. I think I understand now why people save their deep cleaning until the spring -- with everything so sunny and so beautiful outside, you feel inspired to make the inside of your house shine, too. It almost doesn't feel like work (almost).

Some of the things we've accomplished over the past seven days: finally organizing our pantry (which was a jumbled up mess), giving a few pieces of old furniture some much-needed TLC, cleaning and disinfecting hordes of A.'s toys, and rearranging the garage to fit all of James's hunting gear, Anouk's outdoor stuff, and my gardening tools and still have room to walk. I would pick the garage as our proudest achievement so far -- in fact, I find myself going and standing in the doorway several times a day just to admire our handiwork. This weekend, we're tackling the yard. And James and I are currently drawing up plans for a potting bench we'd like to build for the backyard -- neither of us are woodworkers, though. So we'll see how it goes.

While I was scouring the internet for a natural tub spray I'd seen but forgotten to pin, I came across this post at Playful Learning about encouraging toddlers to clean up after themselves and was so inspired by it that I decided to try to involve Anne as much as possible in our deep clean from there on out. I've started breaking down each big task whenever I can into at least one small kid-sized project -- A. wipes the bottom windows, I do the top; she holds the dustpan while I sweep, etc. When we can, we make cleaning into a game, and we're sure to take frequent breaks to reward ourselves for a job well done and to admire our efforts.  And after reading this article, I've also made an effort to start assigning A. small daily chores -- helping to fill the cat bowls and to put away her clean clothes in her dresser. We're still working on the latter, because handing her a pile of clothes usually means she has to stop and try them all on, right there, right now, but she's doing pretty well on the former. In my opinion, there is basically nothing cuter than watching Anouk toddle across the kitchen  with a cup of cat kibble and place it, piece by tiny piece, in the food bowl. So determined, so careful, so thoughtful about it!

Are you spring cleaning this year? If so, here are a links to help you out:

• Apartment Therapy's step-by-step for spring cleaning (don't miss these places!) 
• How to organize your garage so it's summer ready.
• Once-a-year checklist for getting your household paperwork in order.
• Cleaning and disinfecting all kinds of kids toys.

How do you encourage your kids to help out around the house?

Wishing you a very well-organized weekend! 

A day in Colonial Williamsburg

I won't lie: a deep and abiding love of history was not our main purpose for our road trip to Williamsburg. Rather, it was the outlet malls that called our names.  Yesterday morning, Anouk and I met up with some friends and set off: four adults and four kids and dozens of premium outlet stores just waiting to be plundered. Maybe that makes us Philistines? I say it makes us dedicated to a bargain.

But because it seemed cruel to subject a group of toddlers to endure a forty-five minute car ride and then a forced march through an outdoor shopping mall, we decided to incorporate a trip to the CW into our agenda. And by the time we'd finished at the outlets, we desperately needed it. The kids were antsy, had eaten their way through the snacks we'd packed and were clamoring for more, two had melted down in the J. Crew checkout line and at least one (mine) had accidentally shoplifted a headband. So we all piled back into our cars and drove down to Duke of Gloucester Street where we threw open the doors and set them free.

There are several day pass options for Colonial Williamsburg that will let you into dozens of tour sites set up all over town, but because we hadn't researched them beforehand, and because it's a little confusing, once you're there, to figure out where and how to obtain the passes, we didn't bother. And it turned out that there was plenty to do without them. We walked the entirety of DoG Street, taking in the sights. We petted horses and waved at the carriages going by, stopped at a few open-air markets, peeked into 17th century style spring gardens and posed for pictures with colonial era townspeople. There were a few of the tour stops I would have loved to go into -- the weavers and dyers, the tailor's, the milliner's, mostly the clothing-related ones -- but to be quite honest, I'm not sure our age group (3 and under) would have gotten much out of them, if we had.

At the end of the street, we turned the kids loose on the lawn in front of the Governor's Mansion and they pretty much ran until they dropped (which made the walk back longer than the walk there). For the better part of an hour they climbed on the old cannon, explored the neighboring gardens, and watched a group of W&M students playing touch football on the grass.

It was so low key that at first I wondered if I had enough material from this visit for a blog entry, but in the end, I think that's what I loved about our visit: that it was so low key. When I was little, a trip to Williamsburg was a special thing, and meant an over-the-top, quasi-vacation-like experience. And CW can be that. But it can also be a casual day-trip destination spot that doesn't require a lot in the way of planning or packing or a big expenditure of cash. It can just be an everyday experience, albeit in a special setting. All you have to do is go.

(All the same, I think we will end up buying the pass. Right now, the annual adult pass is about the same price as a one-day ticket if you buy online! And I have to go back soon, to see those hats. What are some of your favorite CW destinations? Let me know, and I'll add them to my list!)

Grassy grass grass

With all of the gardening prep going on at our house lately, Anne has started to get very interested in plants and seedlings. I thought we should try to grow something, to give her a sense of the process. It's still a little early to start our seedlings for our garden, and besides, I wanted something a little more toddler friendly (i.e., able to be touched/experienced/loved on without too much damage), so I searched for another plant that would make a good project.

We decided to grow wheatgrass. It's the perfect plant for kids. It's hardy, it doesn't ask for much, and it grows so quickly that sometimes I feel like I can see it growing, which means that it offers pretty quick results, nice when you're dealing with toddler-sized attention spans. Not to mention that it will make a perfect Easter centerpiece, and we won't have to use that crinkly cellophane grass that makes the cats throw up. We could even harvest it for wheatgrass juice once it's full grown, if we were so inclined (I'm not -- whatever the health benefits might be: YUCK.)

Here is how we grew our wheatgrass. First, we ordered some seed online (Todd's Seeds offers inexpensive, organic products, so that's where we got ours). Once it arrived, we sprouted the seeds for a day in a jar of water that we changed every eight hours or so. Then we filled a small pot with a layer of rocks (for drainage -- if your container has drainage holes, you don't need to do this). Added some pre-moistened potting soil, scattered the sprouted seeds in a thick layer on top (so that almost no soil was showing), and covered the whole thing with a damp paper towel. And waited.

Within two days, our sprouts were an inch high, so we took the paper towel off and moved them to the light. Wheatgrass doesn't like direct sunlight, so we keep our pot on the radiator cover in the kitchen, just under the window. We've been watering our seeds twice a day with a plant mister and they've been growing like crazy.

Anouk thought the little seeds were babies, and she calls her grass her "baby grass." Several times a day we take the pot down and check to see how it's grown, check the soil, and give it a nice stroke. The other day I caught her trying to brush the grass with a tiny Barbie brush, and that was my cue to move it to higher ground. :)

Here's the Woody Guthrie song that this post title comes from, btw -- so simple that it shouldn't be a favorite but it is. Have you ever grown anything with your kids? What did they think?

80/20 Burger Bar

James's birthday was at the end of December. Because our birthdays fall near Christmas (mine was the 26th), neither of us have the traditional birthday party experience, but we do like to go out for a nice dinner together. But finding a sitter during the week after the holidays is a little bit of a feat, and we'd been abusing the familial babysitting privileges, so we knew this year that we would have to bring Anne along with us. With that in mind, we wanted to find someplace where a toddler wouldn't be too disruptive -- but a place that was still festive enough for a birthday meal.

When we look for a kid-friendly restaurant, we tend to keep three things in mind: a toddler-friendly ambience, but with dishes that will also appeal to more sophisticated grownup palates; bonus points if the food is reasonably healthy. Usually, we can get two out of three, and when we do, we mark it to go back to. 80/20 Burger Bar on 21st Street in Norfolk was the rare place that offered us everything on our list.

The restaurant is warm and inviting (I read somewhere that the owners built everything in the restaurant themselves, which is super cool), with a bustling atmosphere that covers up baby chattiness. There is a full-service bar, but it's separated from the eating area, which avoids that whole Sweet Home Alabama "you have a baby? in a BAR?" dilemma. The kids' menu offers darling slider burgers and some other options to accomodate a little pickiness. And the rest of the menu was novel and fun and delicious enough to get us parents excited, too. (James had the Alamo Burger and I had the redneck Wellington...a burger wrapped in pastry, with mushroom duxelles and goat cheese. How cool is that?)

Here is Anouk eating every. single. thing. on her plate

Our favorite thing about 80/20 is their commitment to serving grass-fed, grass-finished, locally sourced beef. We try to avoid unpastured meats for our family whenever possible, but especially for Anne, since she can't make decisions about what type of food she eats for herself. It makes eating out a little tricky at times, so it was nice not to have to worry about it. Everything on the menu was fair game.

Some other highlights: The extensive selection of french fries (bay spices! rosemary and parmesan! fire-hot-pepper blend!), house-made flavored sodas (alcohol-spiked available for the adults), and some really refreshingly creative sides (order some smack and cheese for the kids -- and for yourself).

And now, some things to keep in mind if you decide to visit: 80/20 opened just a few weeks ago and is getting a lot of (well-deserved) buzz, which does mean that wait times can be a little long, especially on the weekends. We were told 20 to 25 minutes, which was just long enough for us to pop over to Carolina Cupcakery for some birthday treats, but friends and family who have gone have been told to plan for an hour or more. It might be a good idea to call ahead to suss out wait times, especially if you plan on bringing the kidlets. Also, there have been rumors that chef Joe Pavey is planning on paring down the menu after a month or so, so make sure you order everything you want this go around in case it doesn't make the cut (Pimento cheese. You've got to order the appetizer cheese plate!)

We had a great time. It was a wonderful birthday dinner for a wonderful dad.

Cheers to you, Jamesy! Bottoms up!

Have you been to 80/20 Burger Bar? Are you planning to go? What did/would you order?

Happy weekend, everybody!

Toddler-friendly monoprints

I'm always on the lookout for art projects to do with Anouk, but our options at her age seem to be fairly limited. Cutting and pasting are too complicated for her little hands. Anything involving clay or other play-dough type substances is out, as she hasn't fully passed out of the stage of putting everything in her mouth. But she is at the point developmentally that she sometimes needs something more than a handful of crayons to hold her attention. So today we tried making monoprints, and it turned out to be a surprisingly toddler-friendly craft.

The gist of the project (which I first read about at No Monsters in My Bed) is this: You roll a thin layer of paint onto a cookie sheet or other nonporous surface (we used a paint roller and the Crayola washable fingerpaints -- "washable" turned out to be the key word here). Older kids can use a Q-tip to draw on the painted surface; we used our fingers and hands. When you've got your design just how you want it, you press a piece of paper gently over the paint, pull it away, and voila: you have a print.

 Baby A. was a little freaked out by the sensation of paint on her hands, and after a few tears, we looked for other objects to use to make designs.

Verdict: I can't think of an art project that's more likely to appeal to a bunch of different age groups from infant to adult (while Anne worked on her masterpiece, I played around with ideas for holiday cards and thank you notes). In spite of one moderately annoying cleanup job (I've seen worse), I'm calling Operation Monoprint a keeper.