Summer Dispatch 1: So Much to Do

And then there was One. Week. Left.

We are a week from my daughter heading to second grade. The summer has flown by.

Last summer, she enjoyed a week of Vacation Bible School, enjoyed the ocean for a few days, went to her first art camp, and fell in love with the world of Harry Potter.

This summer, she spent a week at VBS and once again enjoyed time in the ocean. In the past month, she has also revisited the first five Potter books in audiobook form (we’re holding off on volumes 6 and 7 until she’s a little older), and she continues to sleep in.

But a lot is different.

  1. She took swimming lessons at the YMCA. While she didn’t learn to swim, she did learn to be less afraid of the water. Plus, she made new friends. 
  2. Speaking of which…she’s had playdates with school friends and proved herself capable of building friendships with kids she meets at libraries, etc. 
  3. She’s part of 4-H for the second year, but unlike last year, she’s doing projects this time. She completed her yearbook for her garden project last week (she helped plant, grow, and harvest a mixture of vegetables and flowers), and she’s been practicing leading her bucket calf (a growing Holstein steer) in anticipation of her first showing season. I saw her learn how to chip away at a pretty thick writing project a little daily, and she’s shown real bravery in dealing with her growing calf.
  4. She attended her first drama camp, made new friends, and honed her intuitive comedic timing. I developed a routine of conducting a post-camp interview where my daughter would film herself while I asked her questions about the day. It gave her a chance to strut the performance skills she was learning, and I probably got more details out of her about how the day went than I would have otherwise.
  5. She’s playing basketball for a co-ed YMCA league, a team where she is one of only two girls. This is her first time playing an organized sport, and she’s willingly practiced and shown marked improvement. We thought she would be a decent athlete. She’s proved our hypothesis correct.
  6. She has started listening to audio CDs (we bought her a cheap cd player at Goodwill), and she’s gone through plenty of books from the Spy School and How to Train Your Dragon series. At the table each evening, we’ve had her read portions of the Bible too. You can tell she listens to a lot of audiobooks. It’s not just that she can read lots of words beyond her grade level. It’s that she reads with real energy and precision. 

There have been a couple of random day trips to the local zoo and science center and plenty of visits to local libraries. 

Every single day, she does at least one thing that frustrates me (e.g., a histrionic reaction to ill-fitting socks) and one thing that endears her to me (e.g., using the word “situated” as a way to describe what she’s going to do with her horses when she gets back to her room). 

I have more specific content to post here, but this is a reminder to myself (as much as anyone else) about what she’s been up to during the last eight weeks. I’m proud of her.

Spring Dispatch 2: The Time-Traveling Truck

I wrote my daughter a book. Its hero is a third-grade girl named Harper Lee Williams, who travels in time with her grandpa to visit cowboys.

I wrote one chapter a mystery called The Farm Sleuth. When I asked my daughter if she enjoyed it, she said, “It was like there were magnets drawing me to other books.” I kept the central character but rewrote the story as a time-traveling adventure. The Time-Traveling Truck was born.

My favorite part was writing a chapter during the day and reading it to my daughter at night. She was a good editor.

“What’s going to happen next?” That was a sign I had done good work.

“It needs more of a twist!” That was a sign I needed to revise.

I hope to do this again.

Spring Dispatch 1: Spring Break 2023!

My daughter spent the first day of her spring break at school…only it was my school. 

She endured the fifty-minute-one-way commute, went to two different meetings, checked out books in the library, attended chapel, and grabbed lunch in the caf.

Chilling in my office watching cartoons while I was teaching? Yep. 

Walking around campus in the afternoon and running into students and colleagues? Check.

Two worthwhile moments:

  • “Dad, do you know what I like most about coming to SWU? You’re here!” That’s some Hallmark-level heartstring appeal!
  • After her first shy interaction with a colleague, I encouraged her to look people in the eye and be sweet. She did so for the rest of her time on campus.

Winter Dispatch 3: Transformers

Here’s a parenting truism: my daughter’s not going to like everything that I like, and I’m not going to like everything she likes.

My wife and I are culture hounds, so we want our daughter to dig good books, music, and movies. We’re seven years in, and she’s doing pretty well. She loved Charlotte’s Web, sings along with “Walking on the Moon” by The Police, and gladly watched The Wizard of Oz.

When she was four, I introduced her to a bit of pop culture I loved at her age: The Transformers. I had the toys, I read the comics, and I watched the cartoon. She seemed game. Pretty soon, she was singing the catchy theme song, and I was getting my nostalgia fix while she watched cartoons. Parenting score!

At some point (I’m not sure when), my daughter turned against The Transformers. Over the past couple of months, her antipathy has intensified, and it’s become a go-to joke.

“Can I watch cartoons?” “Yep. If you watch Transformers…” “Dad!”

“I got a movie for us to watch tonight.” “What is it?!?” “Transformers: The Movie.” “Dad!”

It culminated a month ago with her singing the tune of the theme song with altered words.

“Transformers / More than meets the eye!” became “Transformers / Catherine hates it so!”

Even I had to laugh at that one.

I certainly didn’t love everything my parents did (Thirtysomething or Twila Paris).

Plus, she nailed the syllables and rhythm. I lost the battle but won the war.

Winter Dispatch 2: Tuesdays with Stories

My daughter and I have a new Tuesday routine.

At 2:15 pm, I pick her and her cousin up from school, drop the cousin off at her house, grab a snack at our place, then head to the public library for a couple of hours.

My daughter spends her time previewing new books, playing computer games, and completing her weekly homework.

I wasn’t the only parent with this idea. From 3-5 pm, this small library branch features plenty of elementary schoolers hanging with tutors or parents and doing the same thing we’re doing.

Saturday has long been Library Day for my daughter and me, but we rarely go to this branch or stay for this long. It’s been nice to become familiar with the librarians and not feel like the library is a box we need to check before we get donuts (our other Saturday ritual).

Our streak is up to three weeks, and we’ve left each time with an assortment of books, audiobooks, and completed math and language arts exercises.

As for the donuts? Well, that’s a story we’ll save for Saturdays.

Winter Dispatch 1: Basketball Jones

My daughter has been bitten by the basketball bug.

Last week, she attended a girls’ middle school basketball game. The gym was beautiful. The play was not. My daughter didn’t care. The next day, she said she had to go to practice, loaded up her backpack, ran out to our back deck with a bouncy ball she got from the Dollar Tree, and pounded the rock for an hour.

This weekend, I took her to see my university’s women’s team play a game. We were on the front row at center court, and she was riveted. She’s been dribbling around our kitchen/family room, giving us scouting reports for her team (who can make shots, pass well, etc.), and generally behaving as though this is how she plans to spend any and all of her free time.

The basketball bug took a chomp out of me when I was younger than her. I’m still recovering.

We’ll see what her prognosis is in a week.

Fall Dispatch 3: Learning to Ride

When we got home from the state fair (the subject of a forthcoming dispatch), a bike was sitting in our driveway. My wife’s cousin had gotten it for our daughter. It looked cool. She was excited.

There was just one problem: my daughter didn’t know how to ride a bike without training wheels.

So she and I headed out on a Sunday night to start work.

It had been a year since she’d ridden her bike with training wheels. To jump back in with a brand new (bigger) bike was a tall task.

The entire enterprise was a practice in parenting as much as it was biking.

We worked on it for twenty minutes a piece on Sunday and Monday. She hadn’t had a breakthrough yet, and she was scared of getting hurt. I knew I had to do something different. My daughter already had a bike her size, and thanks to the kindness of a local bike shop proprietor who filled the tires for free, we went out Tuesday night looking for progress.

After fifteen minutes, she was in tears and ready to go. I asked her to try for just five more minutes. Before we left, I had a video of her riding for ten seconds on her own. She watched the video over and over on our way home. When it was time to head back out the next night, she watched it again and again to get herself primed.

This time, she put it all together, and this time, my video captured forty-five seconds of pure pedaling, turning, and braking confidence.

To say I was proud of her would be an understatement. To say she was proud of herself would be an even greater understatement.

It was the educational and familial highlight of our week.

Fall Dispatch 2: Halloween

Halloween has come and gone. What a difference a year makes.

For the past several years, our daughter dressed up as a kind of cat: a tiger, an American short hair, etc. It was fairly easy. Face paint? Sure. But it was pretty low maintenance.

This year, she only had one costume in mind: Harry Potter.

Since she started reading the Potter books in the summer, she’s been obsessed. We’ve gone through five of them (she just reread Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), and her passion shows no sign of abating.

Every burgeoning wizard needs gear: a cloak (Amazon!), a Gryffindor scarf (birthday present!), Potter-esque glasses (Target!), and a wand (an adapted pick-up-sticks game piece!). And don’t forget the forehead scar! My wife had all of this on lockdown.

My daughter got to wear the costume three times, and with her missing front teeth and her hair tied back into a bun (she wanted to be Harry, not Hermione), she looked really, really cute.

We’ll see if she still wants to be Harry when the next Halloween rolls around.

Fall Dispatch 1: School Pics

My daughter brought home her first-grade pictures yesterday. They already seem like museum pieces.

Comparing her kindergarten pic and this first-grade one clarifies how much she’d grown. Her face is fuller and her smile more mature. She’s not a little kid anymore, and her pictures document that transformation.

But even over the past month, my daughter’s appearance has changed. She’s lost her two front teeth in as many weeks, and neither replacement has emerged.

I don’t know how long this look will last. The school pics captured my daughter’s look at the end of whatever phase she was in before. Now she’s in between.

Birthday Party – By the Numbers

7 – the number of years my daughter’s been alive

4 – the number of days after my daughter’s actual birthday when we held her birthday party

24 – people who attended said party, including the guest of honor and her parents (i.e. us)

7 – the number of Harry Potter books my daughter now owns as a result of generous family members

4 – the number of snack bowls available at the party, each named after a house of Hogwarts (e.g., Gryffindor grapes)

0 – slices of Raspberry Elegance cake from Publix remaining after the party

10 – the number of cupcakes left, since even the kids wanted the scrumptious cake

0 – minutes of Quidditch played since it was raining heavily outside

30 – minutes spent on the back porch maneuvering an outdoor remote control car in, shall we say, adverse conditions

2.5 – number of hours my daughter spent with her best friend from kindergarten who is in a different first-grade class

3 – number of half-chewed and spit-out Bernie Botts’ Every Flavour Beans found in my daughter’s sink after the party was over

1 – very happy birthday girl

2 – tired but relieved parents