Little Girl-Led Baking Soda and Vinegar Volcano Play

When a little girl gets in the mood to make a baking soda and vinegar volcano eruption, then off she goes:

Willow and I made this plaster of Paris volcano together years ago, and it still sits on a shelf in her room, and is still brought out for the occasional eruption, as it was on this day.

It's fun for me to sit quietly and watch my girls work together, negotiating and bickering and problem-solving, in their kid-led, kid-chosen, kid-created activities. They're so darned independent these days!

They bicker like an old married couple.

Or, I suppose, like sisters.

My Latest over at CAGW: Beeswax Sourcing and Roller Shade Redos

a review of Knorr Beeswax's rolled beeswax sheets

and a tutorial for mending a torn roller shade with vintage and stash fabrics

I am THRILLED about how nicely my roller shade repair turned out, which makes me all the more irritated about how long I left the torn roller shade looking that ugly. 

Let's see...the weather had just turned warm for Spring, so I'd gotten into the habit of leaving the window entirely open, and Willow got this great idea about how she was going to climb out the window, using the roller shade, Rapunzel-style, to belay from...

Late Afternoon at Ocean Beach

When we're on the coast, any coast, we HAVE to go to the beach. I don't care if it's foggy, I don't care if it's windy, I don't care if it's almost dark, I don't care if the section of beach just north of us has been closed off because of a massive sewage spill--we HAVE to go there.

I know it doesn't make total sense; I grew up in Arkansas, so I should be finding my greatest pleasure on the river, or in the mountains, or driving out to the countryside, and I do enjoy those places, but not as much as I love the beach.

So on our last day in California, after a long afternoon at the Children's Creativity Museum and the perfect playground on the rooftop of Yerba Buena, Matt's parents drove us across the city and straight into the fog so that we could visit Ocean Beach:

The kids had their usual fabulous time, running around like maniacs, soaking themselves in freezing water, grubbing like the wild little critters that they are, as seemingly happy playing to the tune fog horns in this low visibility as they were two months ago in the bright sunlight and the pleasant water of Florida:

And the next day, we flew home!

Let Your Girl Shoot a Gun

On the day after Thanksgiving, there is a selection of activities from which the 45 or so Thanksgiving guests of Matt's Aunt Mabel can choose:

1. Sydney chose to go shopping with her Grandma Janie and a bunch of people.
2. A bunch of other people went golfing.
3. Matt, Willow and I chose the obviously best activity, however--a trip to the firing range with a third bunch of people.

I did plenty of shooting as a high school kid back in Arkansas, and I'd forgotten how much I love it. In JROTC, however, we only shot air rifles. But Cousin Jim and Uncle Lynn, whose hobby is shooting, own a wide variety of weapons, and they were very generous and let us try out all of them. The other guys who were there seemed to prefer the big guns, the kinds with laser sights and kicks that whomp your shoulder when you shoot. I liked those a lot, too, of course, but for me, nothing beats the familiarity of a .22--it's light, has no kick, sports a simple sight, and is plenty effective for the types of shooting that I like to do. I had a fabulous time getting acquainted with this particular lovely rifle:

Matt tried out all of the weapons, too, and I tried to sway him in favor of my favorite, but in the end, he fell hard for the pistol:

The biggest surprise by far, however, was Willow. Poor Will, it turns out, although she HAS shot rifles before, has never, of course, been to such an overwhelming place as a firing range before. It turned out that she didn't really so much want to go to a firing range this time, either, but just chose it as preferable to shopping or golf.

I don't know what she was imagining the firing range would be like, but as we waited our turn, and as her cousin Jim gave all the kids a lecture on safety, and as we tried the heavy ear protection on her, she steadily began working herself up into such a fit of nerves that, by the time it was actually our turn on the firing range, she was in tears. 

Since Matt had never had a chance to be in a firing range before, and I have, I took Willow back out to the car to sit and wait for the rest of the guys, but I was VERY upset, and I'm afraid that I let her know it. It's a selfish personal peeve of mine that I take the kids to all kinds of places that I find incredibly boring, but whenever I want them to come with me to something that I really, really want to do, they often find a way to throw a fit and ruin my fun.

So selfish of me, I know, I know. And on our walk back to the car, I gave Will a selfish lecture about it, about how the firing range was perfectly safe, and a huge amount of fun, and I'd been looking forward to it so much, but now instead we were going to go sit in the car and read quietly to ourselves for two hours while everybody else had fun. 

To be fair to myself, I did ask Will several times, in several ways, if she could vocalize what was upsetting her, but who knows if she even understood, herself, what was upsetting her about the firing range, much less knew how to put it into words for me. Poor kid.

Also to my small credit, it took me about ten seconds in the car to realize what a huge asshole I'd just acted like, to my own kid, even. So I apologized, lied and said it was fine to hang out in the car, and comforted myself with the thought that Matt would certainly come and switch off with me at some point. 

I'd barely managed to finish apologizing and lying and not sounding like an asshole this time, when Willow piped back up and said that she wanted to go back in. So now I REALLY felt like an asshole, and pumped up my enthusiasm for just how totally okay it is! To sit in the car instead of going to the firing range! But Will, perhaps having renewed her courage in the quiet space, hopefully not having been cowed by what a jerk I am, but probably having realized that she didn't have two hours of reading material there in the backseat of the car with her, insisted.

So back in we went.

And to my brave girl's HUGE credit, she had an awesome time:

There's no better children's shooting instructor in the world than Willow's Uncle Lynn, and he talked quietly to her, patiently instructed her, and, completely giving up any shooting himself, gave her and the other two girls who'd come all the time in the world:

With Uncle Lynn assisting Willow, I got my selfish shooting time that I'd privileged over my kid's happiness, and Matt got his shooting time, and Willow got her shooting time, too:
And guess what?

She LOVED it!!!

Look at my kid with her very first bullseye!

 I knew she would, which is, honestly, partially why I'd been so frustrated with her. Shooting is precise, encourages focused concentration, involves some pretty awesome equipment, and can be clearly, easily, and immediately evaluated. It's individual, with your main concern being your own improved performance. It's basically everything that Willow would like, including the cool shell casings that you can collect and sit on the floor playing with when it's not your turn to shoot:

Will pocketed a ton of these, by the way, even finding the bucket where they're thrown at the end of a session and pulling out some other casings that made Jim, later, look at them and say, "Whoah! What was THIS from?!?". Flying home with them was monumentally stressful for me.

Willow spent most of her time on the rifle, including a super bolt-action one that reminded me so much of my JROTC days as a kid, but after watching me and Matt take turns shooting Uncle Lynn's pistol, she requested a turn for herself, and Uncle Lynn gamely complied:

It ended up, thank goodness, being a terrific morning, and Will ended up, thank goodness, having a wonderful time. She's such a great kid in that, even when she's protested something and thrown a fit about it and everything, when she finally submits to doing it and discovers that it is, in fact, just as great as I'd been telling her it would be, she doesn't have an attitude about it, or pretend to still hate it just because she doesn't want to be wrong. She still hates it when I attempt to gently remind her that this is why it's good to try new things even if you don't want to, but she still admits to genuinely liking what she's come to like.

And when I suggested that when we finally get our dream house with five or so acres surrounding it, we should totally buy a rifle of our own and set up a target range with a bunch of hay bales, she agreed that that was a very fine idea, indeed.

At the Tech Museum

What do you do on the busiest cooking day of the year?

Yeah, we left my mother-in-law chained to the oven and escaped to the Tech Museum.

Free with our ASTC Passport reciprocal membership to the Wonderlab, the Tech Museum was a huge hit for three of us and a dismal bust for the fourth of us. Poor Syd didn't WANT to explore math and hard science using interactive technology; Syd wanted to go a hands-on children's museum like we usually do!

And is Sydney a good sport when she doesn't get what she wants, but instead has to play along with what everyone else wants to do?

No, she's not!

Mind you, I could also go on and on about cross-country jet lag, that bugaboo that causes children to wake at 3:00 am Pacific Time; to need to eat when they wake, when everyone else is eating breakfast, an hour after breakfast when it's lunch time on the east coast, when everyone else is eating lunch, and then again at 3 pm; to be utterly exhausted by 5:00 pm Pacific Time but to want to stay up until midnight on east coast time; and then to wake at 3:00 am Pacific Time the next day. Cross-country jet lag does not improve the behavior, stamina, or attitude of children.

To make a long story short, I perp-walked Sydney out of the Tech Museum perhaps an hour after we'd arrived, followed by Matt and poor blameless Willow, who actually was a pretty good sport about being required to leave a museum she'd just gotten to, was enjoying quite a lot, and was behaving herself at.

We went back to Matt's parents' house, where the day passed by with several more off-hours meals, a visit to the park, and some quiet family time. Then, later that afternoon, Matt and I did something that happens to all of us so, SO rarely:

We left Sydney behind with her grandparents, and we took Willow, sans sister, back to the Tech Museum:

designing and testing a submersible

The Tech Museum has some of the same types of exhibits as other hands-on science museums that we've visited, as well as a lot of really special stuff, of course, but the unique thing about the Tech Museum, the thing that blows it WAY out of the water compared to every other hands-on science museum of my experience, is this thingy that they call the "tech tag." It's your ticket stub with a bar code on it, and when an exhibit in the museum has a bar code scanner, you can scan your code and later, at home, log into a free account and see digital passport stamps, or high-speed film containing the time frame that you visited the exhibit, or photos of you actually at the exhibit. You may have been in an earthquake simulator before, for instance, but now I have a photo of our family taken while we were in the simulator! I have a family portrait taken with a 360-degree panoramic camera, and I have a thermal family portrait:

How cool is that?!? Welcome to my new online avatar:

Of course, there were tons of fabulous and unique exhibits here. Many of them were so special that you have to see video of them to believe it. This is Google Earth, seen through a 180-degree surround screen:


This is a simulator of an astronaut's MMU, used during EVAs:

 There's a video camera that records your face for several seconds, then uses its facial recognition technology to merge your features with those of other visitors:


There's a robot arm that, after you type in a word or phrase, will spell it for you using alphabet blocks:

There's another robot that, after you pose for it--

--does a really funny, and REALLY abysmal, job of drawing a portrait of you that looks nothing like you:

This was Matt's favorite musical exhibit--

--and this was mine:

So much of my time parenting two children is spent mediating, moderating, managing, etc., that I feel like I often forget to enjoy them. Yes, I take them lots of places to do lots of things, but at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, for instance, I've just realized that while the girls were seeing the Wright Flyer for the very first time, instead of looking at them to enjoy their surprise and enjoyment, I was looking at the museum map trying to convince myself that surely there was some place besides McDonald's to eat, and wondering if the carousel takes credit cards, and trying to figure out if the girls could manage both the Natural History Museum and the Museum of American History without getting too footsore. 

There was none of that this time. While Syd was having a ball back at her grandparents' house making rice crispy treats with her Grandma Janie, I got to really take the time to enjoy my Willow's surprise and enjoyment, to notice the exhibits that she loved and run her to the bathroom to puke, bless her heart, when the exhibit on genetics tweaked her tender stomach (needles and syringes, doncha know?). Matt and I got to play with Willow all together without her having to share, or us having to leave out the other kid. Matt and I got to talk to each OTHER, my goodness!

And THAT was a good vacation.

Afternoon In San Francisco

One of the many nice things about visiting California is that Matt has a ton of family there; it's like Family Central for his clan, and so not only do you get to see all the regulars when you visit, but if you're visiting for a occasion, such as a wedding or, I don't know...Thanksgiving?!?!...you also get to see many of the outliers, those relatives who live in Mexico or Germany or Washington or the East Coast, but who are also making their pilgrimage to Family Central for the event.

And that's also how you don't just go to San Francisco for the afternoon with your husband and kids--you go to San Francisco for the afternoon with your husband, your kids, their grandparents, their great-grandma, and their great aunt and great uncle. They drive, and they navigate, and they treat you to a restaurant that you'd never otherwise budget for!

We ate lunch at Fog Harbor Fish House, which I highly recommend if you're interested in trying seafood, because their seafood is sustainably sourced using the recommendations of the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, and so you don't have to feel too creepy about eating it. I was especially excited because since our mollusks study, Willow had been eager to taste raw oysters. At Fog Harbor, we had a sustainably-sourced menu from which to order a half-dozen raw oysters for whoever wanted one, and Uncle Carlos to demonstrate the proper handling, saucing, and sucking down of said oysters.

Dreams really do come true in San Francisco:
Add in a big bread bowl full of clam chowder, and all the warm sourdough bread spread with melty butter that a kid can eat, and Willow came away from the table with her tummy nice and comfy, indeed. I have no idea what Sydney ate, probably macaroni and cheese or some such nonsense, certainly NOT a raw oyster, but she came away with a comfy tummy, too, so lunchtime goal achieved.

After lunch, the rest of the family wanted to visit Ghirardelli Square, which is totally not our speed, and then to drive back home, which is TOTALLY not our speed, so Matt, the girls, and I unashamedly ditched them. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening sightseeing--

Chatting with a baker at Boudin as she makes crab-shaped sourdough bread

Posing in front of Alcatraz (We'll save that one for a future visit, ahem)

 --laughing at the sea lions--

 --and riding stuff:

Cable car!!! We also rode aimlessly in buses and trolleys, just so you know.

The pinnacle of our "riding stuff" adventure was catching the CalTrain back to San Jose that evening, arriving back home with two sleepy, sleepy girls who were happy to be fed a quick dinner and put to bed before the grown-up dinner.

Now, I love spending time with my babies, but I could get USED to that!

Leaving on a Jet Plane

36 hours.

That's approximately the length of time that the girls and I spent at home, before we were off and away again.

Enough to sleep two nights in our own beds.

Enough to do the laundry, then repack it.

Enough to...no, not actually enough to do anything else. We slept in our own beds for two nights, we did laundry, we repacked, then we were off and away again--this time with Matt, at least!

Matt's parents invited us to spend Thanksgiving with them, and a visit to them in California is extra-special, not just because the girls adore their Pop and Grandma Janie, but also because...

Airplane ride!!! It's been a couple of years since the girls were on an airplane, so the adventure was exciting all over again. The girls packed their dino backpacks with healthy snacks, their favorite stuffed lovey (Foxie for Willow, Wild Pony for Sydney), a couple of toys (the paper airplane, shown above, really wasn't the abysmal choice that I'd feared it would be, considering how empty this early-morning airport was), LOTS of books, and a CD case each of DVDs and audiobooks. Syd also has a portable CD player, but I provided my laptop for movies:

I tell you what, that Magic School Bus complete series may be the most useful thing that I have ever purchased. This is the third major trip that it has entertained the kids, and they never seem to get tired of it! AND it's educational!

And that's how we went coast-to-coast in four days.