A Very Special Trip

My sister and I just returned from a trip to Washington D.C.  When Bubbe was diagnosed with lung cancer, she said to me, "There are two things I want to see before I go - you be a mom and Washington D.C."  Well, she got to see the former, albeit for a short time, but she never got to visit Washington D.C.  Ben had even planned a trip that was canceled due to her deteriorating health.  It was just sort of unspoken that my sister and I would one day take this trip for her.  We got a cute luxury apartment on VRBO and spent 5 days sightseeing, eating out, and lots of quality sister time.  We got to visit with our cousin, Sarah, and see the aquarium in Baltimore.  Here are some pictures from our trip.  Neither of us brought a real camera so these are just from our phones and are pretty random.  

  

We brought some her ashes in this little wooden box.  This sat on a bookcase in our living room growing up and I always loved it.  

Jessie even got Michelle Obama bangs!

One of the first things we did in D.C. was visit the National Museum of American History.  Mom would have LOVED this museum.   We started with the First Ladies exhibit, which was pretty cool.  The Star Spangled Banner was pretty incredible too.

Gelato = happiness.

We had dinner with some of Ben and Jessie's friends and went out for gelato after.  I love gelato.  One of the happiest moments in my life was eating gelato in Venice 15 years ago.

Meanwhile, Charlotte was at home making "a jingle belt."

One of the joys of traveling in these modern times is getting pictures and text messages from home.  Mike sent me lots of pictures of Charlotte being her adorable self.

We also visited the Hirschorn Museum and sculpture garden.  I loved this oversized stick of butter.

Mike and Charlotte went to Choo Choo Bobs

Waiting in line, it was cold.

We went to the Holocaust Museum first thing in the morning to wait in line to get tickets.  We got tickets for the afternoon.  Then we had lunch in the cafe at the American Indian Museum and then spent the day walking up and down the mall to see the memorials.  My mom would have loved the presidential memorials. We spent over 3 hours in the Holocaust Museum and we didn't even see all of it.  That's the thing about Washington D.C. it's impossible to see it all in one trip!  We'll just have to go again!  And our dad always wanted to go to Greece and never got to go, so one day we'll have to do that too.

President Suze

Charlotte has been interested in airplanes ever since Suze visited.  So, I knew I wanted to get her a flight related souvenir on my trip to D.C.  Enter toy Air Force One.  

She loves it.  It flies around the living room, joins us at the dinner table, today the airplane went through a tunnel.  When we ask her who is on the airplane, she says, Suze.

Art Imitates Life

Charlotte enjoyed the "grocery store" today at the Children's Museum.  Emily noticed that Charlotte's shopping cart was filled almost entirely with fruit.  Of the items in her cart, 90% were fruit.  It is probably not a coincidence that when ask Charlotte what she wants to eat, 90% of the time she will name some kind of fruit, or just go to the fridge and get out three different kinds of fruit and put them on the counter and ask you to cut it all up for her.

The More Things Change...

...the more things stay the same.

Here is Charlotte a year ago during Sprin Break, at the Children's Museum in Kansas (on our drive to San Antonio), about to fall asleep at the water table.

And here she is today, during Spring Break, at the Children's Museum in St. Paul, about to fall asleep at the water table.

Conversation with Emily #1290

This afternoon Emily and I were talking about basketball for some reason.  And soon we were talking about the rules for some reason (I forgot why).

Me: What would you do if you were a ref in a pro game?

Emily: I don't know.  Just run up and down the court doing this (mimics hand gesture refs use to count time... see ref at the right hand corner in the video below if you don't know what I'm referring to).

Me (very curious what her explanation will be): Why do refs to that?

Emily: To make sure the person with the ball is dribbling it.  When the guy with the ball is dribbling, the ref moves his hand.  When he stops dribbling or passes, the ref stops moving his arm.

Me: What?  Why would they do that?

Emily: So they can keep track if he's supposed to be dribbling or not.  To count if he's traveling.  He's fake dribbling.

This is actually a logical explanation... if the ref was five.  I am going to make a bigger effort to get Emily's explanations as to why refs are doing other things in sports.  She was a softball ump once.  That in and of itself is a funny story now that more than a decade has passed and the parents who wanted to "kill the ump" have had a chance to cool off. Emily also played softball in high school, so she has those rules covered.  But I am really curious to see what she has to say about referee behaviors in football and basketball.

Examples like this, where we come to goofy but logical conclusions are rare in adulthood and it is the closest we can get to seeing the world as kids.  You have a little bit of information about something and you have to tie it into your world knowledge.  Just like Charlotte thinks I drink black water, the Mississippi River runs down our sidewalk, and Suze is on every airplane on earth, there are still times when we can make similar crazy ass conclusions, like refs making like the Crown Prince of Baseball mimicking the players while they play.  I'm sure we all have this sweet spot of some enough information to make inferences about something, but not enough to make them accurately.

I just seredipitously happened to stumble across Emily's area: refs and sports.  But it is awesome when Emily does it because she has this was of presenting her theory as if it's God's truth.

Conversation with Charlotte #7382

Sunday evening my friend Nathan came over to watch the Gophers unimpress and underwhelm its basketball fans in the second round of NCAA basketball tournament (technically called the third round now, but there is a lot of of buzz to just start calling it the Thirsty 32).  It was a fitting end to a disappointing season.  Fortunately, Nathan, Charlotte, and I went to dinner at Longfellow Grill first so I had the game DVR'd and Nathan and I were able to fast foward through most of the second half and watched Louis CK's stand-up special, Hilarious, instead.  

But Charlotte had a great time.  Longfellow Grill is always fun for her, and then I let her watch five minutes of basketball with me and Nathan before she went to bed, which for her was a real treat.

It also doesn't hurt that Nathan fits her ideal demographic of people she likes to hang out with: dudes between 30 and 60.  I had a friend in college visit me earlier this winter and he was over at our house and Charlotte orgnaically pulled out these flirting skills that I had never seen before.  Ever since then, it's been a pattern, as it was with Nathan.  She was showing off for him, by jumping on her trampoline, and then cozied up next to him to watch basketball.  It was pretty funny and very sweet.

And now whenever we drive by Longfellow Grill, Charlotte points it out and says, "Longfellow Grill.  Eat with Nathan."

So today we were driving by and Charlotte again noted where we were.

Charlotte:  Longfellow Grill.  Eat with Nathan.

Me: Yeah you me and Nathan ate there a few days ago.

Emily: Did you have fun?

Charlotte: yeah.

Me: Do you want to go there again with Nathan?

Charlotte: No.

Ouch.  Cold-hearted.  Take that Nathan.

Waiting and Hiding

Yesterday afternoon I told Charlotte that Emily was coming home and Charlotte said she wanted to go outside to wait.  We spent a good chunk of yesterday outside soaking up the advent of spring.

During this particular sortie to the backyard, she walked around and played with the dog and then kicked snow for a bit before then sitting on the steps singing to herself for a long time.  I was making dinner, watching from the kitchen. Eventually I got a chance to go out to talk to her while the sauce simmered on the stove.

The camera froze up in a few spots early on so it skips around two or three times, but it's more annoying than anything else.  We talk about singing, Emily coming home, and then Charlotte decides she wants to hide around the corner like she saw Pancho doing.

Overheard, Exhibit F

Emily is in Washington DC with her sister until tomorrow.  A couple of times on Saturday Charlotte said, "Mommy working."  So I explained to her that Emily was actually in Washington D.C.  She found this explanation to be as acceptable as I do when someone explains something to me over my head but I know to take them at their word (theory of relativity anyone?).

The final step to Charlotte's bedtime routine is to run to the top of the stairs and shout "Night night Mommy!" So Saturday night she did that out of habit and I reminded her that Emily was in DC and she said, "Oh" kind of like how I would say "Oh" if someone told me that time and space are relative.

Since then, Charlotte has been true to her routine but notes her mom's absence.  She will typically shout night night to whatever animal is not in the room with us or when my friend Nathan was over Sunday night, she just shouted at him.

But today for her afternoon nap she ran to the top of the stairs and shouted, "Night night Mommy Washington DC!" And then as she was walking to her crib she said, "Mommy go on trip.  Mommy on a airplane."

Huh.  Well, if she can piece that together, maybe I can piece this together afterall.

Nope.  I just watched it a few times and was like, "Whatever" after about 40 seconds.  Good to know that Charlotte is not "whatever" about Emily, and is trying to sort out where her mom is.

Language Post

Warning: Boring

Over the past 48 hours, and yes, the window seems to be that specific Charlotte made this sudden jump with her use of personal pronouns.  She is finally sorting out how to use "me" vs. "you" and "my" vs. "your" and all the other first and second person pronouns that change according to who is talking.  

As an aside, a hallmark language sign in kids on the autism spectrum is an inability to ever sort this out. These kids will often use "I" for "you" and "you" for "I" for example, which makes sense, when you consider abstract thought and perspective taking is really hard for these kids.  So when their dad says, "It's my turn" they think "my" always means the other person, and never get that the meaning flips depending on if you are talking or listening.

But Charlotte does not have autism and she is outgrowing that error pattern.  She still says "carry you?" when she wants me to carry her up the stairs but other than that she is pretty adept at flipping the pronouns around, much more so than when the weekend started.

And then today we were taking Pancho for a walk and she was using "us" and "our" for the first ever.  She was telling me how Pancho was going to "walk with us" and how the snow shovel was "our snow shovel."  Kind of neat to see that just happen in a blink of an eye.  

I'm so used to having explicitly teach these concepts in creative and endless ways, so I continue to take note when it happens so organically and quickly, like it is supposed to.  So none of this is probably interesting to anyone but me, since I am describing language development in over 90% of all kids.  But to me it is noteworthy when I spend my workdays seeing the kids who are not in this 90% group.

The World According to Charlotte, part 7

"Come to think of it, I'll just have water."

Emily bought Charlotte and me a gift card to Smashburger for Christmas.  And our first trip there in January on the gift card resulted in this compelling conversation.  Today we went back again and used up the rest of the money on the card.  

Two months later, the "Smashburgerrrrrrr" conversation is about the same, only it begins earlier, on the way to the restaurant in the car.  Every two minutes Charlotte would blurt out "Smashburgerrrrrrrr."  And you know how people can say something and you have no idea how to reply in any way that is remotely meaningful? Well it turns out "Smashburgerrrrrr" is one of those instances.  Luckily things got more interesting.

But it started out as it usually does with Charlotte.  We got there and she was doing the same thing: labeling everything.  I think she does this when she is really excited about something and doesn't know how to express it other than point out every detail she sees.  My theory is that Charlotte is bathed in excitement and happiness, and it spills over to color even the smallest detail in her surroundings and enhances everything she is experiencing.  Even the wrapper the straw came in is so absurdly awesome it has to be pointed out.  There is something to be said for that.  Suck it, cynicism.

So when Charlotte's milk arrived, she thought MILK!!!  I'VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT MILK AT SMASHBURGER FOR THE LAST TWENTY MINUTES AND NOW IT'S RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME.... IN A SMASHBURGER, NO LESS!!!!  THIS IS AWESOME!!!!!  

But that enthusiasm comes out sideways, and less direct and more slowly for Charlotte.  Instead, in Charlotte's world, this just means it's time to talk about our beverages, and point out who has what.  I had a Coke, which I drink maybe ten times a year, tops.  And Charlotte took note.

"This is a Charlotte's milk.  That a daddy's black water."  

Black water?  Gross.

Well that took away any ounce of enjoyment I was going to get from my Coke.  And to really drive the point home, Charlotte's new thing now is to sing about two things back and forth.  She is really into opposites right now and they also sing a "clean and sort" song at Montesorri.  

So in the spirit of "clean and sort" she will sign songs like.... I don't know, of the top of my head.... "Milk!  Black water.  Black water.  Black water.  Milk!  Black water.  Black water.  Black water."

This only lasted about thirty seconds.  But even so, I think I am done with Cokes for the year.  It was a perfect public health PSA.  Well done young lady.

The World According to Charlotte parts 5-6

Part 5.  Time outs are lonely and cold.  Late this morning Charlotte and I were in the backyard taking our own sweet time getting to the car to run some errands.  During that time she slipped and fell.  It was nothing to serious, but enough to make her cry for about 30 seconds.  I was up on the deck and she was by the garage when she fell so it took me about ten or 15 seconds to get to her.  As I was putting her in the car, she had totally recovered and was happily debriefing everything that happened.

"I fall down.  I crying.  I was in time out."

Okay, I guess it had three of the key of the components of a time out: crying, not being on two feet, and isolation. I guess in Charlotte's world is what a time out is.

Part 6.  More shape changing wizardry.  This time it's not a person changing form, but the common hair bow.  One evening a few weeks ago, I was getting Charlotte ready for bed and she kept talking about a crocodile.  I could not figure out what she was talking about, until she finally pointed to a hair bow that was next to her on the changing table.  Emily has since told me there are hair thingies called alligator clips, although we have yet to use talk about these clips.

It turns out, these magical hair bows are crocodiles when they are lying dormant or just picked up, and then transformed into "airplanes" when you pick them up to them in her hair, and then are back to being bows when  they are in her hair.  No word yet if Suze is on the bows when they are airplanes.  I hope not, because then my mind would explode.  It will take more than Marty McFly to explain that one... maybe Rick Moranis' charachter from Honey I Shrunk the Kids would also have to be drafted.













Crocodiles, airplanes, and bows.  I could use this story with the students I see who have language disorders.  Context is everything in interpreting meanings of words, I tell them. Understanding and applying that is something they are always working on.  Nice to see Charlotte is off to a good start in this area.

The World According to Charlotte, pt. 4

Charlotte and I went to the zoo this morning and she now knows her way around and what she wants to see.  She loves the otters and talks about them all the time.  Today we got to see them during feeding time, which she thought was great.  Hibernating bears?  Awesome.  Leopard cubs play fighting?   Who doesn't love watching that?  Sharks and tropical fish... yes please.  Penguins?  Well...

Charlotte is not impressed.  

I lack the words to describe how bored she is by penguins.  She always says she wants to go see them and then when we get to the penguin jail cell exhibit, they may as well be showing a documentary about the history of guitar strings as far as Charlotte is concerned.  She could not be more bored.

But then coming home, she wanted me to stop the car in the alley in front of our neighbor's garage to look at and talk about the roof that was built in December.  And then when we were walking from the our garage to the back door, she lagged behind to shovel snow (big surprise).  While she was doing that, I let Pancho out and he peed in the snow on the other side of the yard.  Charlotte thought that was the most interesting thing she saw all day.  She dropped her shovel and trudged through untouched snow to look at the pee and talk about it.  Pancho could have peed on top of Mt. Everest and she would have found a way there, she was so determined.

A roof and dog pee are awesome.  But penguins are lame.  Got it.

The World According to Charlotte, part 3

As has been well documented, Charlotte enjoys the ritual of shoveling snow and chopping ice. Whenever we get out of the car in the afternoon and head from the garage to the house, she will stop to either shovel or chop.

Our sidewalk in the backyard is basically a giant riverbed, so all the thaw runs to the sidewalk and then freezes when the sun goes down.  This is fun for Charlotte because we get to chop the ice and find water underneath.  But we've had some nasty coldspells (still!) so lately there has been nothing but ice almost all the way to the cement.

But last night's freeze was a gentle one, meaning today when we chopped the ice, I found about an inch of water underneath which Charlotte was happy to see.

So Charlotte looked down at the trench of standing water and said, "It's a Mississippi River."

Kind of, I guess.

Overheard, Exhibit E

Charlotte loves to sit at her table (that her cousins in Texas used to use) and color.  As a result, she has accidentally marked up the wall a little bit, as you would expect.  This morning she was sitting at her table and I walked into her room and she pointed at a red line on the wall and said, "the wall has a owie" and went back to drawing.

Overheard, Exhibit D

Charlotte again rushed into to the bathroom when she heard the toilet flushing.  She offered up this gem as she saw the water bubbles in the toilet bowl:

"Bye bye trash bubbles."

Trash bubbles.  That's more like it.  So much better than yummy bubbles.

If You Liked Icebreakers...

...then you'll LOVE Snow Shoveler.  Same cast.  Same director.  Same writers.  Get your popcorn ready.

The World According to Charlotte, pt 2

Charlotte is really enjoying her new daycare/school (Edgcumbe Montessori), and a few new rules have materialized.

1. Boys rules.  Girls drool.  All of the kids Charlotte talks about from school are boys.  She has taken a particular interest in some guy named Carver.  I don't know too much about Carver except that he has blue snowpants.  He can put his snowpants on by himself.  And he cried one day.  A self-sufficient guy who has a sensitive side?  Charlotte is off to a good start in picking a boyfriend.

2.  It's okay to call your parents "teacher" and "Babiya."  It's pretty funny.  We think Babiya is the woman who helps with the toddlers at Montesorri.  Charlotte usually calls us Babiya when she is playing her favorite game: go night night.  Ironically, this is often her game of choice before bedtime.  But in the game she calls us Babiya when she wants us to tuck her in.

The Teacher thing is also funny.  She fully knows I don't want to be called Teacher but yells it anyway when she needs help or attention that is not urgent.  Whatever Charlotte.  I ignore her when she calls me Teacher and she keeps at it anyway.  I have to say I admire her persistence.

Overheard, Exhibit C

Charlotte, watching the toilet fill up, after I flushed it:

"Ooooh, yummy bubbles."

Ice Breaker

Snow and ice mean two things to Charlotte: shoveling and chopping the ice.  Like father like daughter.  We took her out on a sled once but she is pretty happy helping shovel the snow and breaking the ice.  I can only hope she still enjoys these chores for the next 16 years of her life.

Caption contest

Overheard, Exhibit B

Get ready for the most gripping opening to a story ever.  Hold onto your hats, because here we go!

I have two belts.  One is brown and one is black.  Both are over ten years old.  Normally I wear my black belt because I wear black shoes to work.  But lately I've been on a brown dress shoes kick lately, so I have been wearing my brown belt a lot more freqently.

The end.  No not really.

Also, we have a brass jingle bell on one of our door knobs.  Either it is a Christmas decoration that we forgot to put away or.... well I have no idea why the jingle bell is there.  Emily?

Anyway, the brown belt features weathered leather, like you'd find on jingle bells, and a brass buckle.  Whenever I put on my brown belt or take it off, and Charlotte sees it, she will point to it and say, "Jingle belt."

And only my brown belt is the jingle belt.

That was a long way to go for that "kids say the darndest thing" moment but it was worth it, no?

Like, Ooops

Saturday afternoon Charlotte found a bag of dried apricots and kept on calling them her vitamins.  They are round, and they do have the same translucent quality of her gummy vitamins.  She walked around with them in her possession the rest of the afternoon and evening. At bedtime she insisted on taking them with her into her crib.  I agreed, as the apricots were closed with a twist tie and she had shown zero interest in eating them.  I thought it was funny that most kids want their teddy bear for bedtime, but Charlotte wants a bag of dried apricots.

Fast-forward to Sunday morning.  I was out running with some friends when Charlotte woke up.  So, fortunately for me, I was not first responder.  Emily walked in when she heard Charlotte blabbering away.  When she opened the door, Charlotte was standing up in her crib, held out an opened baggie, half-full of dried apricots, and said, "Vitamins!"

Emily said, "Did you eat some of those?" and Charlotte matter-of-factly said "yeah."

We have no idea when she ate the apriocots but it must have closer to bedtime than wake up time.  Let's just say that when Emily was done changing Charlotte's diaper and cleaning Charlotte up, an orange hue remained on her bum.

Like I said, glad I wasn't the first responder.

Self-Cleaning Oven

For the last few nights, Charlotte does her own bedtime routine.  She reads her books to herself in her own chair.  She sings her own lullibies. She runs to the top of the stairs to shout goodnight to Emily.  Then she runs to the crib and waits for me to put in the crib.  I just sit in the chair and watch, keeping her on track.

Here she is reading her books to herself.  Charlotte's cousin, Hannah, will notice that for her last book, Charlotte chose Maribelle, one of Charlotte's birthday presents from Hannah and her parents.

Overheard, exhibit A

Charlotte, talking about the cats.

Points to Nacho.  "That a big Nacho."  Points to Toonces.  "That a little Nacho."

Cats are weird.

The World According to Charlotte

I have yet to meet a toddler who ignores an airplane.  And given how close we live to the airport, there are a lot of airplanes for Charlotte to notice.  For some reason this winter, the airport is using its least used runway a lot more frequently, which is the one that goes right over Longfellow.  So Charlotte has had even more airplanes to point out.

And here is what we know to be true about Charlotte's understanding of airplanes.

1. Suze is on every airplane Charlotte sees, be it in a book or in the sky.

2. Every airplane is going to Texas.

I'm not sure if Suze is piloting the plane or just riding it.  In the Richard Scarry books, Charlotte will point to all characters associated with an airplane and say it is Suze.  

Well done Suze!  That is quite an accomplishent.   For this to work you have to:

1. Be an aviation Jack-of-all-trades.  You know how to pilot a plane, be a flight attendant, load and unload baggage, and drive and operate a fuel truck.  And you are also racking up an absurd amount of frequent flyer mileage on a bunch of airlines.  You may want to check to see if UPS and the United States Air Force have frequent flyer programs because you been seen on their airplanes as well.  And maybe check with UPS about getting you out of the cargo hold.

2.Be a Greek god or a Pokemon.  Shape changing from a human to all the animals in the Richard Scarry books is not a mortal skill.

3. Own a kickass DeLorean with a flux capacitor.  Some of the airplanes you have been found flying on are five minutes apart.  The only way to explain this is that you are in two places at once.  Enter time travel. 

The close observer will note that there are two Marty McFlys in this screen capture.

4. Have lot of free time.  Time travel or no time travel, the amount of time you are spending flying seems exhausting and consuming. Semi-retired or not, you are living an active life.

No matter what, I know this to be true: a time-traveling, shape-changing aviation craftsman is a pretty badass grandma to have.  Charlotte is very lucky.  

It should be noted, however, that we all have our flaws.  Yesterday Charlotte pointed out an airplane to Emily and me, and let us know it was Suze, going back to Texas AGAIN.  So Emily piped in "Come on Suze, make up your mind."

Don't let the smile and motherly vibe of this library scientist fool you.  She can turn into a tiger and fly a military jet from San Antonio to Minneapolis in a matter of seconds, and then three minutes later turn into a bear with a wrench, rewiring a 747 before a transatlantic flight.