"Blue" Matter

"Sixteen dollars!" I remember the bad casino-like carpet, the stairs with the little lights, and the look of absolute disbelief/disgust on my dad's mustachioed face as he lamented the fleecing he endured for four of us to see Ghostbusters. Sixteen bucks for four people. I don't think that candy bars were a nickel, but that's about how old I feel whenever I think about that moment... and sadly, I think about that moment almost every time we go to the movies and the prices seem crazy. I project into the future when my kids laugh about their parents spazzing about $15 movie tickets and then feel like Dr. Evil when he can't wrap his brain around the money flux of one generation... 

There is one consistently good movie theatre deal in this town. At the Lincoln Center Film Center they have a little theatre with a fairly small screen where they show family movies. It's $6/ticket and they show children's foreign movies (often they will have somebody sit in the back reading the subtitles into a microphone for the little ones who can't read -- depending on the reader it's either a) cool/funny b) neutral or c) distracting/irritating). I like thinking that hearing all the foreign languages is giving the kiss of life to my kids' foreign-language-specific neurons that otherwise might wither, die and look like microscopic Easter grass. They also show classics (i.e. it was at this theatre that we saw Elvis in all his politically-incorrect/sexist, yet highly-likeable glory in Blue Hawaii... If there are sexy-sneer neurons we're keeping those alive, too).  

Today we went and saw The Blue Tiger. It was made in the Czech-Republic and absolutely beautiful. The sensibilities were all inline -- the poor, nerdy, artsy, nostalgia-channeling, naturalists were the heroes while the money-grubbing, modern, clean-lined folks were the bum-holes. The child actors were great. The occasional overlay of animation was fun. Perhaps one of my favorite elements was that the children consistently brought their parents into whatever was happening. So often it seems like movie-adults are bumbling idiots who can't be trusted with what's going on. While I get that this is the construct that works so that the movie-kids can have their adventure, I worry that it's a missed opportunity to teach not-movie-kids to partner with their folks.  Today the movie-adults didn't do anything superhuman -- they just offered ideas and support and were cool. In one scene the overweight, badly-dressed mom with bad teeth was chatting with her daughter and The Boy leaned over and whispered, "She kind of reminds me of you." I took it as a major compliment -- hoping of course that he was referring to the insightful things that she was saying to her girl.

We came home and looked up where the Czech-Republic is on the globe (I mentioned that "when I was a kid" it was called Czechoslovakia...). We also found out that there is a Blue Tiger -- a Maltese Tiger that is a "blue" slate grey color (and might be extinct). We talked about how maybe somebody heard about the book Blue Tiger written in 1924 by an American explorer... and their brain started playing around and came up with the loveliness we saw today. 

Brains are weird, but often do cool things. 

There's Always Don Knotts

Ugh. The little creep gave me his little creeps. I've been feeling achy and cranky and freezing cold all day. 

Today there was quite a bit of listless wandering about the messy apartment. Too cold to go out when we feel like junk. Blech. The Sister manned the ship while I did some volunteering (before I realized I was going down...), and even once I was home she was still managing things as the only functioning not-small person... but even she's slightly strung-out from the too many moving parts associated with college applications. We're falling apart.

Aside from some art (The Girl), and some report-writing about marine life (The Boy), there was a math lesson on arrays. 

Somewhere in the fog there was a viewing of The Apple Dumpling Gang. Don Knotts. (That's a complete sentence.)

Finally The Dad came home and took them over to the church gym for some running around. The good news is that Judd the Red Chicken is about back up to speed. Whatever this is, it's short-lived. (I'm trying to subtly imply that the crappy parts to the scheme are short-lived and life in general goes better for people who know that even when things are blech there are still good days to be had... and there's still Don Knotts... but I'm too murky-headed to make this work.) 

Anything to Get out of Shopping

Considering it's winter break we started off all sorts of academically-competitive what with piano and math knocked out by 11:00... but The Boy kept slinking back to his bed. After some snarky things said by both parties (I might have accused him of faking it to get out of going to Anthropologie to check out the sale; he might have accused me of not letting him do whatever he wanted when every other kid in the world had the day off; I might have countered by explaining that he's pretty much "had the day off" since September; etc.) I thought to check his temperature... sure enough, a 102-fever. By this evening he felt well enough to hang out on the couch and be half-heartedly silly, so hopefully it's a bug that was drastically weakened by the super-human quantities of chocolate and carbs that the host-body consumed yesterday.  

Once we get back up to speed we will build some of the Christmas spoils into the curriculum.  

Magic

It certainly moves swiftly. With one more deep inhale and exhale Christmas will be over. Things will be tucked away with the understanding that much will happen between now and when we unpack them again. 

In the movie Elf Central Park is on Santa's route. Last year we wondered if we would find any signs of Santa if we walked through the park on Christmas Eve. We found bells and sparkly stuff (magic?), and pieces of cloth that looked like it might have ripped off of an elf uniform, and a torn piece of parchment that had people's names on it -- perhaps the naughty/nice list?  I kind of expected to find those things... What I wasn't expecting the kids to find was sleigh tracks and reindeer scat. It seems like if we provide the means to find something, the children can take it much further...

Tonight we will go again. We might find some expected things... Having now been inducted in the 100-viewings-of-Elf-club, I'm kind of expecting to find a bottle of maple syrup? I'm most excited to see what the children find that I'm not expecting. It's the convergence of adult expectations/preparations and childhood imaginings that make the magic. 

After going to Macy's and asking all the elves their elf names we came up with our own on the subway home.  I'm Mistletoe (which is totally stupid... I kissed a kid on the top of the head as I said it... How is it that the mom always ends up the dork of every family activity/project?). The Sister is Cough Drop. She started out as Gum Drop, but then we made fun of her for kind of being a hypochondriac and decided Cough Drop would be funnier. Judd the Red Chicken is Eggnog. The Girl is Arctic Fox. The Dad wasn't there so the children dubbed him not Silverback, but Silver Unicorn (very manly)... A man sitting across from us was laughing until we got off at our stop. I'm sure he was thinking that I should have been Cuckoo Clock...

So from all of us, Silver Unicorn, Mistletoe, Cough Drop, Eggnog, and Arctic Fox, we wish you a very Merry Christmas.  And if you don't celebrate, we wish you a very Merry Tuesday. 

The Details of December

Today I've been thinking about small details. They are the things that are missed most when somebody passes, the things that make you laugh hardest during a stand-up comedy routine, the things that make a person most cranky, and the things that most demonstrate that somebody loves you. It's the small details that make life life. 

We went to the Met tonight to see the Angel tree as a family. I have very specific guidelines for people when I tell them to go see the tree: go at night -- so that there is that special evening-at-the-museum-hush, and so there isn't light coming in from the skylights; don't just look at it and move on -- wait for the "lighting" presentation that happens on the half hour. I didn't know that while the museum stays open late on Fridays, the last lighting is at 6:30. So we missed it this year. And it was okay. The children love walking around the tree and looking at all the details -- the dogs, the water, the tiny baskets with tiny fruit, the monkey sitting on the stairs holding cymbals and being watched by a wolf-dog... The lighting is a breathtaking tah-dah-oriented spectacle, but it is the small details that make it a rich process of discovery and personal connectivity. This year The Girl pointed out the little lamb that is peeking in at the Baby Jesus and she said, "I guess he's thinking, hmmmm, I know that he's special, I wonder if I can look at him and figure out  how to be special, too."

While at the Met Judd the Red Chicken requested that we briefly run through the Arms and Armor exhibits. He was so excited to show The Dad everything and tell him the details that he's been learning during our visits. This is indeed an area where we have spent a lot of time, and yet, we found out tonight that we had missed something very cool:

Yep. That's a helmet with a chicken visor. "It's like somebody said, what would [The Boy] most like and the answer was: something chicken in the Arms and Armor!"

While touring that school last week I was listening closely to the philosophies and values -- of the school and of the different teachers. One of the things that interested me was the idea of block time. They find that there can be deeper and more thorough experiences and projects if they don't expect the children to constantly be changing gears and then returning to old projects over and over. The art teacher said it most succinctly: something that takes ten hours can be exciting if it's only spread over two weeks, but can be detested if it takes six weeks because it keeps being dragged out over and over and over again. To that end they do things like concentrated art for a few weeks and then concentrated dance, as opposed to both dance and art being offered at the same time. It makes sense to me. Usually when I start a project there's a certain amount of tinkering and settling in before meaningful work starts to happen. I understand that in order to keep the attention of 30 kiddos a rapidly-moving schedule works best... But I wonder if that's most conducive to that deeper level work.  

Today I printed out a couple dozen of these templates from the Design Mom blog. I told the kids that working on them could be our math for the day if they cheerfully created and answered math problems as we worked ("I have twenty wreaths and two wreaths go on each house. How many houses can be decorated?" "Five elves sleep in a house. How many elves are there if there are ten houses?"). I figured it might be an activity for an hour or two, but I told them that they could go at it as long as they wanted. They created their village for about five hours -- just with markers and some glitter glue and three cotton balls -- the art bins never came out. They had fun thinking about, discussing, and implementing their ideas for the details. 

The village restaurant is a place where animals are as welcome as people.

The hotel offers parking for a fair price.

We are a family that loves glitter. We joke about getting glitter-lung. Our friend who is also glitter-addicted says that we're like so many raccoons. Since this is a Christmas village there needed to be a house devoted to glitter.

Santa's workshop has a gear on the side and a candy cane smokestack so that any pollution smells nice. 

Santa has two dogs to protect him and love him (love that exclamation point!).

This village was their version of Utopia, so just as there had to be glitter, there had to be the National Park Service (with a little coyote finding refuge).

And a zoo.

A pet store...

An aquarium...

Reindeer stables (or raindeer stabble)...

An animal toy workshop...

It could not be Utopia without Yucky Old House -- which is a dilapidated apartment building on 74th that The Boy has loved for the last few years. He has dreams of buying it when he's an adult and restoring it for the three of us (his parents and sister) to live in while he lives in the backyard in a mobile home with a pet rooster. My kids aim high.

We couldn't be happy without the City Museum (complete with a tunnel, zip-line seat and slides). 

Coast Guard headquarters (The Boy's office is the one (drumroll) with the chicken looking out the window). 

A maritime museum is surely a staple in most Christmas villages... 

The Sister has been working on her college applications and essays, but she did sit at the table for a while and contribute the NPS (except the coyote that was added by The Girl), and the two sweet shops.

The elves have a dormitory-like set-up. 

Practically speaking... I guess they figured that we needed a DR for our survival... As is evidenced by the slap-dash yellow exterior... it was a last minute "oh, yeah!" addition. 

The snow house is similar to the glitter house... you can't really have a solid Christmas without either one.

And you can't have a solid Christmas village without a prison... with a guard tower... we're realists around here.

In this family we know that parking isn't something to be overlooked.

I was in charge of Town Hall... the first building in the village.  My architecture/design contributions ended there and I was asked to do more manual labor (cutting and applying glue-dots). 

Each of these details -- and the combination of them -- tell me about the interests and values and concerns and dreams that are inside my kids. I learned about what matters most and what's currently floating on the surface, and now by documenting them I have a snapshot of who they were and how they saw life in December of 2012. Best math lesson so far. I'm grateful for this blog so I have a place to house our details.

Happy Winter Solstice. We have a lovely family friend who contributes pretty things to life, and the other day she shared a sweet poem about the solstice. Today both kids memorized it and presented it to The Dad and The Sister while we drove to the Met:

I Heard a Bird Sing

by: Oliver Herford

I heard a bird sing

In the dark December

A magical thing

And sweet to remember.

"We are nearer to Spring

Than we were in September,"

I heard a bird sing

In the dark of December.