03.17.08
Posted in Family, Travel at 8:44 am by Christina
Jamie and I are recently returned from New York and the funeral of my grandfather, Raymond Pisani. He was in his nineties and had been declining for several months, presumably from advanced bladder cancer for which the family had decided to cease regular treatments. Pepa had been progressively senile and the treatments were extremely difficult for him starting about a year ago.
Jamie and I traveled east with the generous company of my brother and nephew, who both flew into Oakland rather than heading due east; this was a big deal especially for my brother, because he could have gone direct from LA and conserved more than a day of personal time. We so appreciated their company and assistance! We no doubt could have managed the trip, but it would have meant violating my minimum food and entertainment requirements for a 6+ hour trip with a toddler…
We spent 2.5 days with my extended Pisani family honoring my grandfather’s life. After Tuesday’s full travel day, Wednesday was spent visiting, both at Grandma’s apartment and at the funeral home. Thursday we attended the church and cemetery services, as well as a family luncheon after those. Thursday evening we looked through many old family photographs: Pepa’s parents and his youth; a special journal of pictures sent to him from the U.S., mostly from Grandma, while he was stationed in the Pacific (as an Army dentist) during WW2; and snaps of him as a father after the war.
There were military honors at the cemetery, and I asked my father afterwards if Pepa would have appreciated so much emphasis on his army service. I was under the impression that he really didn’t enjoy that era of his life, because he lost a dear brother in Europe (without getting to say goodbye due to an unexpected deployment followed by the death soon after; there probably wasn’t even time for letters to be sent) and also didn’t meet his oldest child for almost two years. Although his parents had emigrated from Italy and others made trips there to meet relatives and visit the ancestral soil, he always refused to leave the United States because of what had happened the first and only time he ever did so, during the war. However, I learned from my dad that quite to the contrary, despite the obvious tragic aspects of the war, my grandfather was otherwise quite happy with military service. He wanted to remain in the army as a career officer after the war, but my grandmother didn’t like the frequent relocations. He served in the reserves for about twenty more years, enjoying his two-week stints each summer and retiring as (I believe) a lieutenant colonel. He even tried to reenlist for the Korean War, but was “too old” at that point. My dad said that the regimentation and order were most appealing to him, the chain of command, as well as the fact that he could enjoy his dentistry without being in private practice. Pepa was a very meek personality and although he was a successful dentist from the moment he graduated at the top of class, the management aspects of private practice (getting people to pay you what you asked and so forth) were incredibly stressful for him.
You learn something every day!
Jamie was a trooper on this trip, enduring four straight days of extreme management of his time and energy. Despite, or perhaps as a result of, being used to much freedom, he was able to cooperate with the many strictures on him as a result of planes, trains and automobiles, funeral homes, churches and restaurants. Not to mention not-toddler-proof hotel rooms and apartments, and time zone changes. I won’t overdo the modesty; much of our success arose from my own skills, developed over twelve years of traveling with my kids, resulting in choices on my part such as the original asking for traveling companions both for transport and lodging, and continuing through such actions as encouraging quiet sticker play in the back of the church and so on.
I am very glad I made the trip. I don’t know that I needed it so much for personal closure; but I would have missed out on the shared reminiscing that was so wonderful, and I know the support to those who are feeling his loss more keenly than I was greatly appreciated.
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09.28.07
Posted in Family, Homeschooling, Kids, Parenting at 4:57 pm by Christina
Camp Poomee is my kids’ weekly day with their grandparents (Jeff’s folks) who live in the next town to us. This day – Friday right now – is one of the single greatest contributors to my mental health, since as a homeschooling parent I am with my kids almost all the time. Some days I wish my own parents lived in the next town so I could have two days a week! But then I remember that my parents contribute to this by having the kids for extended periods of time; the girls have been traveling up to Spokane for week-long visits for a couple of years now, and they usually go twice a year. So that gives me longer stretches of down time, which I usually use to do ridiculous things like juice fasting or insane household projects.
Jamie just turned two ten days ago, and for various reasons he has started going to Camp Poomee for a couple of hours in the morning on Fridays. The biggest reason we started it now is because Emma needs the time. Emma is a middle child. In and of itself I don’t think that predicts our behavior as parents, but right now she is a mild child sandwiched between two siblings with pretty high needs. This hasn’t always been the case, but Katie is entering adolescence, and Jamie is a toddler, so what more needs to be said? 
In any event, I guess we have done right by our kids in terms of nurturing their emotional intelligence, because Emma was able to come right out and tell us that she needs more of our time and attention, that she has been getting lost amid the hysterics and diaper changes.
So we arranged with Jeff’s parents for Jamie to start have a couple of hours on Friday mornings. Katie brings her academics and works in the study; Emma and I (or this morning, Jeff took a turn) go off to have some dedicated time together. And Jamie gets to do stuff like this: Jamie at Camp Poomee
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08.29.07
Posted in Family, Household, Kids, Music, Singing at 7:04 pm by Christina
Well, we just returned home from a terrific weekend in Los Angeles with family! As soon as we got home, we dialed in to the theater casting line to hear the final selections for the Oliver! cast – and both girls were in the final children’s ensemble! Our fall will be as full as we can handle; they’re both super-excited and can’t wait for the first cast meeting this Saturday…
Back to the unpacking!
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08.21.07
Posted in Family, Homeschooling, Household, Kids at 8:19 am by Christina
In years past we have maintained a very low-key schedule of “extracurricular activities”, that is, activities that take us away from the house. We were primarily away from home one day each week, Wednesdays, which included homeschool choir in the morning and homeschool orchestra in the afternoon. Occasionally we added another activity to the schedule: an art class here, a nature program there. By choice, we embraced the “home” in “homeschool” and most of our time was spent in that space.
Not so this year! In a major volte face, we will be spending what seems to me an extraordinary amount of time out and about. Here is the list:
Katie & Emma simultaneously:
- Homeschool choir
- Violin lessons (private, individual lessons now)
- Drawing lessons
- Ballet
- Possibly participation in the musical Oliver!, which they auditioned for this past weekend
Katie:
- Flute lessons
- Orchestra (Youth Orchestra of Southern Alameda County) (Emma will be auditioning for this as well but is not likely to have the skills to pass until next year)
Emma:
There are a couple of things I think that are driving this change in activity level. The first is a maturing Katie. I have observed her passing out of the “intense play” stage of life. That stage was lengthened for her (or was perhaps as it naturally occurs) by our choice to homeschool; she never entered the school space where the precocious advancement of a child or two to the next stage drives everyone forward by force of derision or envy. It is possible that our camp-filled summer is merely obscuring her desire to play, that camp time is making solitary pursuits a higher priority; time will tell. In any event, Emma, who as the second child even in a homeschool is driven forward at a different rate by the presence of her older sibling, though with less derision and envy, is also exhibiting an interest in more activities. I will say that Emma still shows herself still solidly in the “intense play” stage, however; with Katie moving out of that stage, it will fall to me to provide other, non-sibling playmates for her to meet that need.
The second factor in the increase in activities is Jeff’s home business. I can only stand so much time out and about, and the girls have fit into that rhythm, content to toss scarves all over themselves and live in their imaginations for hours and days and weeks and years on end. With Jeff working with a laptop on a reasonably independent schedule, our ability as parents to support activities has increased. He will be able to take the girls to their violin lessons and work outside or in the instructor’s living room while he waits. Alternatively, he can keep an ear on the napping baby while I take the girls someplace, if it is timing rather than personality that complicates an activity.
Jeff’s consulting business also provides us with more disposable income, some of which we have budgeted for these new activities. All told, we spend less than half the cost of a good private school education; if we focused only on those programs that provide extensive exposure in the arts, which is where most of our spending goes, I suspect we are spending no more than a third of that kind of tuition. If our kids were in a (mostly) free public school, I suspect our spending would be the same if we wanted the same activities; most of them are not provided at the elementary or middle school level.
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08.14.07
Posted in Family, Household, Kids, Life in general at 1:32 pm by Christina
In every family there will be balls the juggler drops; the key is to make sure you don’t drop any of the breakable ones! We have been marching through the end of a fairly busy summer, and I haven’t been able to do any posting as I keep pace with everyone’s activities. Now there’s a bit of breathing room and I wanted to post an update…
I last posted about our participation in the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows release. Jeff and the girls had a wonderful time at the release party, and as expected I read from about 1 a.m. until 7 a.m. when I finished. Actually, I reread the final few chapters again before I put it down to take a quick snooze. Jamie woke up at 6, but fortunately for me Jeff had fallen asleep early on and was able to get up with him while I finished the book and slept for an hour or so. As planned, I took Jamie to grandma’s house and Jeff and the girls were able to read while we were gone. We went that same night to see West Side Story at Woodminster, a local outdoor theater that we have season tickets for; Katie and Jeff both finished up in the car en route. We all enjoyed Book Seven very much; I personally could have used the epilogue to have given far more information about what the surviving characters did in their later lives. J.K. Rowling did an interview that offered that information and I enjoyed reading it.
The day after West Side Story and Harry Potter, tech week began for me with my community chorus. That was eight straight days of me gone for four hours in the evenings; the last day I was gone even longer because of the cast party. The concerts went really well; I was doing some nerve-wracking things, like playing my guitar in a duet with Bill, and also playing an egg shaker during someone’s solo piece. (The latter was the scariest for me…)
During that week, the girls had their first week of Shakespeare camp, a local camp run by the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival. It was a two-week camp from 9 to 3 each day; they were in different groups within the camp, by age. Emma was in the youngest group; they prepared a show called “Dead Ends”, which ran death scenes from a number of the tragedies and histories. Katie was in the middle group; she earned the role of Oberon (the fairy king) in an abridged version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She had over 80 lines of memorization for her part! They both had a lot of fun and did a terrific job.
After the two weeks of Shakespeare camp, Emma started a week of theater camp at the same theater that sponsors my community chorus. They put on a library melodrama called “As the Pages Turn”. Emma got to be Dick Shunary in a tale of the struggles between traditional reference books and the Power Macs. She really learned how to project her voice, although what she was saying didn’t always make sense because the kids around her weren’t audible!
Immediately after Emma’s camp performance on Friday, we left for a camping weekend with friends that I had been preparing for the whole week. We went to a local regional park, Sunol, that is only 25 minutes from our house. There was no piped water due to shortages, but we were all able to bring along our earthquake jugs as well as jugs of drinking water and had no trouble. The campground was just beautiful, sheltered by live oaks and steps away from Alameda Creek, which although low definitely had enough water for playing; the kids even found a chest-deep swimming hole a bit upstream from us. The greatest part, though, was that it was only a four-site campground and we booked all four sites! So it was private and intimate, nice and quiet – really quite a difference over past years, and I got a lot of compliments on my discovery. I think the fact that it was so close in for everyone was a big plus as well.
Now Katie has started her theater camp at the community theater; hers is a two-week program and they’re preparing The Jungle Book (Disney version). Katie really wants to be Ballou (the bear); today was audition day and she was going to do one of her Oberon monologues as well as the song and dance that they learned yesterday.
At the end of her two weeks we’ll be heading to Thousand Oaks (L.A.) to visit family for a long weekend, and then our summer activities will be officially over. In and around all of this, I am working to pull together the various academics and elective activities for the girls’ upcoming year. It’s slow going as I don’t get many significant chunks of time to dedicate to the effort! There are also the inevitable household projects and activities that want my time, plus things like camping prep and cleanup, and assisting the girls with their theater responsibilities.
Jeff’s been on a lighter workload, thank goodness, but still working to keep up with clients and bring in new work. He’s doing a tremendous job with the consulting business, meeting our financial objectives, using his skills and talents to help clients, and also learning a great deal about the sales and management side of business that he hasn’t had much to do with in his career so far. We are working to make sure he takes time for personal pursuits, something that he really wants and needs but which comes so far down on his priority list that it often disappears. Primarily he is spending time each day exercising on the elliptical in the garage while watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. His health is a high priority for him and he’s enjoying the show as well. He is less able to make time for more relaxing activities, like reading, but we’re more conscious of the need and so making headway.
Now it’s time for Jamie’s nap, so I’ll sign off for now; with the camping done, I hope I can find a bit more time to blog about the various things that have been percolating in my head of late…
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07.20.07
Posted in Books, Current Events, Family, Kids at 4:17 pm by Christina
The imminent release of this book is quite a phenomenon in our house, and we have been building up to it over the last several weeks as all four of the readers here have re-read the first six books in preparation. Jeff and Katie are scurrying to finish Half-Blood Prince…
We have built hardcover collections of the series for our own library and also for the kids’ future libraries; Harry Potter has become a significant memory set for Katie and Emma. We have two copies ordered to pick up after the release party at Keplers Bookstore in Menlo Park, and the other copies scheduled for delivery tomorrow from Amazon.
Jeff is taking the girls to the party from 9 to midnight tonight. Jeff himself will be in a simple costume of robe and hat, dressed (and tagged) as an “Unidentified Ministry Source” – which character is featured frequently in The Daily Prophet newspaper in the books. I created a nametag for him to pin on his robe, based on Ministry of Magic artwork in Mary Grandpre’s illustrations:
Emma is going as Hermione Granger. To this end, she currently has her hair braided in 25 small braids, which we styled into wet hair treated with styling paste; this should give her an appropriately “bushy” look. She’s got a smart “uniform” outfit of black pants, black vest and white shirt, plus her black robe. In addition to her wand, she’ll also be toting a full bookbag (pillow on the bottom and a couple of books on top so it’s not too heavy to carry around!) and some S.P.E.W. materials – sign-up clipboard and membership stickers. She designed the stickers herself and helped me build them on the computer:
She’s also designed a Prefect Badge that I need to create still.
Katie decided to go as Luna “Loony” Lovegood. Based on one of Grandpre’s illustrations she chose too-short pants and scuff sandals worn with socks as her outfit, plus of course a black robe and wand. She also asked her uncle, Joe-Bob, who is a bartender, to collect bottlecaps so she could make a butterbeer cap necklace; and grandma Cissa had some apple earrings that still need to be converted to radishes.
My job is to stay at home with Jamie and anxiously await their return at about 1am or so. I’ll be going to sleep with him at 8:30 so I can get up when they arrive and start reading! Jeff and I both plan to be up all night reading. On Saturday, I have rehearsals at 11 and 1; the plan is for me to take Jamie over to grandma Meemom’s so that Jeff can finish the book (if necessary) and then get some sleep while the girls read. We’ve also decided that the girls may not start reading until there are two books available, one for each (unless of course they decide on a compromise like reading aloud; this is only if Jeff needs to finish still after they are awake).
We started reading the series right around when the fourth book came out (which is when they started being simultaneously released in the UK and US). Katie went to a book 6 release party with her cousin, and we’ve read books 5 and 6 at my parents’ summer party (Clambake 2003 and 2005) (along with many others who were there!- I think book 6 was being read by at least six different people at once that year!). The girls have played so much Harry Potter there are dedicated playroom materials to that game, including fun collapsible trunks we found at IKEA just a month ago. Katie has read all of the books as they’ve come out since she was about 8, and both girls have listened to Jim Dale’s terrific audiobooks. Emma started reading the series about a year ago, around her seventh birthday. We have spent much time in recent months in family discussions about what book 7 will hold, what details we’ve discovered in our re-readings that might be important to the conclusion, and so forth.
It has been a terrific journey that we’ve enjoyed together; I see read-alouds in our future when Jamie is old enough for the experience!
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06.27.07
Posted in Family, Holidays, Outings, Travel, Work at 4:12 pm by Christina
Jeff has finished up a big push through April and May and June that is finally over this week. We had hoped actually to go away for a few days of vacationing, but eventually decided that would be impractical given other constraints and obligations. So we decided that we would vacation from home, which gives us a lot of the pleasures of vacationing, but still our own beds and pillows and none of the hassles of a large vacation prep.
We decided that we would have an activity day followed by a rest-at-home day, with a lot of time spent together as a family even on the at-home days. On Monday we did our outing to the county fair which I’ve blogged here and here. Tuesday we took Cissa to the airport, caught up on a few chores around the house, and worked on getting the new bookshelfs braced (for earthquake safety). We got about two-thirds done and finished up today, Wednesday. First on Wednesday, though, we went to the Oakland Zoo and stayed about four hours, letting Jamie walk through a lot of it (although his favorite parts were the dirt and the pebbles and not any of the animals). I’ll post a few pictures of that once I get them off of my camera.
Katie would like to go on a nature hike; we will likely go to Garin Regional Park in Hayward, which has a creek, but I’ll research a bit to confirm a location with water as that’s important to her. (It could be a hunt; the bay area is very dry and we are seeing daily wildfires out our back windows turning many acres black.) Jeff would like to spend a day at the beach; we’ll need to decide which of the many great Pacific beaches to enjoy. I think I would like to do a bike ride. We’re also talking about seeing a baseball game.
Now that the bookshelves are braced I am going to set up our Library Thing account and we’ll start cataloguing the books and emptying boxes. That is going to be exciting; I got us some custom stamps to label the books once we’ve input them and the girls are looking forward to turning the process into a bit of a game.
It’s wonderful to have Jeff mostly off from work (he’s still participating in a few regular status calls and the like); he’s been working really hard! Still, it seems to be paying off with repeat clients; Genentech just contacted him today to negotiate for a new project.
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Posted in Family, Kids, Outings, Photos at 3:42 pm by Christina
After we finished up in the exhibit hall, we decided it was time to let Jamie out of the stroller for some free-range time. We headed to the kiddie carnival at the back of the fair and he enjoyed three rides with his grandparents. First, a helicopter ride with Cissa:
He just loves helicopters and has a sound-word for them – one tongue click. Propeller airplanes get the same sound, but jet planes get the ASL sign for airplane.
Next was an elephant ride with Meemom:
And finally a carousel horse ride with Poopop:
Took him a while to settle into this one, with some tears at the start, but once he got a better hold of Poopop’s shirt the tears stopped and he enjoyed himself!
All of these rides culminated in requests for “more”!
After a snack – which was actually three different snacks for Jamie as I tried to find something he would eat in quantity, since he hadn’t had anything since his naptime bottle – we moved over to the small animal exhibits and enjoyed rabbits, guinea pigs and any number of birds. Jamie really enjoyed these and the birds, which he could be standing for and under his own power, were favorites:
Then we went to the Alaskan Pig Races and Emma was chosen to lead a cheering section for one of the finalists:
Finally, the girls gave the bungee jumping a shot, convinced us to let them have a second turn so they could achieve somersaulting, and begged us to please let them do it again on our second trip to the fair after the 4th of July:
We had a terrific time! After the bungee jumping we got some more, dinner-like food and listened to a washboard band. Then we spent a little bit of time at the garden exhibits before moving on to the adult carnival where Katie and Emma convinced Cissa to ride the swings with them. I got some cool video of them on the ride – with the dusky sky behind them, it looks like they are being computer-generated against a special effects blue screen.
We’ll be spending a second day at the fair in July, with the girls bringing along a couple of friends whose mom is recovering from surgery. We bought them unlimited carnival wristbands and expect they’ll be on the rides all day! Friends of mine from chorus will be coming for the evening karaoke competition, too, so it will be fun to watch that as well.
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Posted in Arts & Crafts, Family, Food, Kids, Photos at 12:03 am by Christina
I decided to write up our Monday excursion to the Alameda County Fair first, even though it came after Saturday’s outing to Katie’s music camp which I briefly mentioned, and also Emma’s Sunday birthday and the shared Sunday birthday party. I know family will be looking for the scoop on the fair, as Katie entered eight items in the youth competition, and Emma entered six items in the non-competitive children’s categories. The county fair projects are part of their weekly “Camp PooMee” day with Jeff’s parents; grandma Meemom has been sharing all her wonderful sewing, cooking and crafting talents with them over many years! This is the second year they’ve done the fair and we plan to continue. (I was asking my mother-in-law while we were there if she plans to figure out a way to help her other grandchild, my niece Dorothy in Seattle, have so darn much fun every year!) This year we also included my own mother in the activities; Katie made her zucchini bread entry while on a visit to Spokane in May (and froze it to keep for the fair), and we tried to get Emma to work on formatting her poem up there as well but she wasn’t willing…
We headed one town over to Pleasanton after Jamie woke up from his nap; the 4p.m. arrival kept us out of the midday heat that was so hard last year. After juggling all the advance purchase, discounted e-tickets, we headed right for the exhibit hall to see the girls’ entries and especially to see how Katie’s submissions had been judged.
The hall is not organized at all by category, which makes it difficult to track down one’s personal entries. It does make for a fun experience when you let go of the hunt and just absorb, though; the team setting up the exhibits comes up with all sorts of interesting groupings! The girls’ flowerpots that they made for their grandma Cissa were in a large grouping of many different flower entries:
Katie earned a blue first on her pot; the youth entries are judged by the Danish Judging System, which “is based upon established standards of quality for each type of product. In this system each exhibit is judged according to how well it meets that standard, rather than how it compares with other exhibits.” A blue first is 90-100%, red second 80-89%, white third 70-79%, and pink fourth 69% and below.
All of Emma’s entries were given a rainbow participant’s ribbon; she will not be able to participate in the competitive exhibits for two more years. (They start at 9 years of age, and your age for the fair is the age you are on January 1st of the entry year – just like the Kentucky Derby!) The children’s exhibits also had a limit; Emma was able to enter six items and had to exclude a cow drawing that she had been planning to enter. Besides the flowerpot, Emma entered a magnetic poem that we couldn’t find in the hall (magnetic because it was created using tiles in the magnetic poetry kit); a place setting based on the book On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder (second from the left, with the tin cup and navy bandana napkin):
A shift dress that she made for her American Girl doll Josefina:
A sunprinted fabric box:
And some cookie press cookies (again second from the left, sugar cookies with sprinkles):
The kids are allowed no direct assistance in making their entries; every step must be done by their youthful hands.
Katie’s other entries included a sunprinted box as well, for which she earned a blue first and also a yellow and white “Judge’s Choice” ribbon (we’re not sure how many of those each judge gets to distribute, but we’re going to ask!):
Her colonial dress, which she made for her Hallowe’en costume last year, earned not only a blue first but a blue “Best of Class” ribbon, which means that of all the single-piece garments submitted, hers was considered the top entry (the machine sewing division has six different classes):
The rules make it sound like Best of Class and Best of Show entries are not limited to the age subcategories (9-11, 12-14, 15-18) but are across the entire youth competition; we’re going to ask that question on our second trip as well!
Her Gilgamesh story was awarded a white third; we’re interested to see the judge’s comments resulting in that. I’m curious if maybe it wasn’t considered “creative writing” enough because it was not an original piece; perhaps it should have been entered in a different division… (Homeschooling mom trying not to panic!)
Her photograph of a ladybug on a blooming sagebush got a blue first; it had terrific depth of field presentation with a macro focus on the bug and the background blurred out a bit:
Her marker drawing of a black leopard earned another blue first:
The flannel I-Spy type quilt she made for Jamie was also in the machine sewing division and earned a blue first:
Her last entry, a loaf of great-grandma Nana’s Zucchini Bread, also earned a blue first, and marched beyond that to take a blue Best of Class AND A PURPLE BEST OF SHOW! That means that of all the nine classes of food entries in the youth competition (not including preserved foods which are a separate division), her (and Nana’s) zucchini bread was judged the top entry. And let me tell you, this is a very popular category for the kids – there are baked goods especially all over the exhibit hall!
I’ll be providing this award-winning recipe in a later post for you all to try!
We did some other fun things – and Jamie was along with us for them! – but I’ll put them in a separate post, and in the morning – it’s time for bed!
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