rivka

I just made us reservations to go to Chincoteague Island for a weekend in May.

Chincoteague is on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay, south of Ocean City Maryland. It's just across a short bridge from Assateague Island, a protected wildland with herds of wild ponies and beautiful Atlantic beaches.

Alex has never seen the ocean.

Because it's the off season, we were able to rent a 2-bedroom townhouse for $85/night. The townhouse complex has an indoor heated pool and hot tub. That'll be nice if we run into bad weather.

It will surely be too cold to swim in the ocean, but honestly since I'm the only one in the family who is a good swimmer that's probably just as well. I think we'll have a great time wandering on the beach, looking for seashells, and watching wildlife.

Yay.

We spent most of last Saturday packing for SUUSI. Things got seriously derailed when I LOST MY PACKING LIST, which still hasn't resurfaced, and spent too long looking for it instead of just starting over with a new list. But eventually we got the car loaded up with stuff and kids and headed out around 8:15.

Our entertainment for the first part of the drive was driving through downtown Baltimore right past the Otakon hotel. (Alex: "When I grow up, I want to be an Otakon person.") Then we drove off into the sunset, west around DC and out I-66. The kids dropped off somewhere around Fairfax. My hope had been that they'd sleep solidly until we got to Radford, but instead they took turns waking a little and whimpering. I discovered that I can actually nurse Colin in the carseat without taking off my seatbelt, but it's not what you would call "comfortable."

By the time we hit Roanoke, just before 1am, we figured we'd gone as far as was practical. We checked into a Days Inn. Of course once the car stopped both kids woke up and cried in earnest, but they settled down quickly once we were in the motel room. In the morning we drove the rest of the way to SUUSI, arriving at 10:30. Wow is check-in simpler when you get there that early. We flew on through, paid the balance of our bill, got our pictures taken for the Mugbook, signed in with youth programming and the childcare co-op, and managed not to notice the workshop leaders' sign-in table. Oops. We unloaded the car and got our room put to rights fairly quickly, had a really bad dining hall lunch because they hadn't switched over to their SUUSI menus yet, and just hung out with the kids and our friends, being mellow. Laura, Michael's birthmother, showed up in midafternoon and Michael helped her get settled in.

This year, for the first time, Alex was really old enough to run with the pack of SUUSI kids. Any time we were in our room she wanted to go out in the hall or outside in the quad, where she'd run around and play with a big mob of other 3- to 7-year-olds. Several times, she and her friends even established "kids' tables" in the dining hall where they ate separately from us. It was really fun to see her dive into a peer group like that, with no shyness or drama.

We went to dinner with Laura (an official SUUSI meal, so the quality was 1000% improved) and then got our banner for Ingathering. Laura made herself a "First Unitarian Church of Oakland" sign on posterboard. The banner parade was organized to loop around the campus in an inefficient pattern, I guess so that there would be more of a march. It was tiring. As always, I loved the part where, after everyone was seated in the auditorium, the banner carriers paraded in accompanied by drums. I ditched Ingathering early because Alex got tired and cranky and Colin kept startling every time there was applause, so I can't really comment on the program content.

Afterward came Opening Circle. The thousand-odd SUUSIgoers formed two giant rings, facing each other. The circles were broken at one place and the inner and outer rings joined at the break, so that as we circled around we passed from the outer to the inner ring and came face-to-face with every other attendee. It was fun to see folks we hadn't seen in a year.

Then I took the kids back to the dorm for bedtime. It was late, and when we'd gotten our room together beforehand we hadn't fixed the beds. (Radford has unnaturally high beds, and I wanted my mattress on the floor so that I could co-sleep with Colin, which meant putting my bedframe on top of Michael's bedframe to get it out of the way.) I waited and waited for Michael to come back to the room. It turns out that a person who has never raised kids or had much to do with them (i.e., Laura) has very little idea of the powder-keg nature of a delayed bedtime; she had recruited Michael to do some stuff for her, and it took a long time. Fortunately, once he returned, he and the Wild Women had our beds set up properly in about ten seconds.

The best thing about parenting at SUUSI this year is that Alex never protested being put to bed. She stayed up very late looking at books most of the nights, but she didn't come out of our room and rarely called us, so I didn't mind. Michael and I just hung out on camp chairs in the hallway, drinking wine and chatting with our friends. Colin nursed like a nursing thing, got passed around for admiration, and eventually fell asleep in my lap.

All in all, the first day at SUUSI was much, much more pleasant than it usually is. I think we're going to try to drive the night before from now on.

[Poll #1422136]

"The Factory Tour Capital of the World" is York, PA. Unfortunately Alex and Colin are too young to tour the Harley-Davidson plant, but we're thinking of touring the Wolfgang Candy Company, the dairy, and perhaps the Utz potato chip plant. I think it will be fun.

Is there something wrong with me?

I just registered our family for SUUSI.

This year I am taking:
The Joy of Thrifting (two sessions of field trips to thrift stores)
Chocolates Around the World (a tasting session)
Mountain Lake Biological Station (natural history trip with a little easy hiking)

And of course, I am teaching a workshop too: Parenting in the 21st Century, with the brilliant bosssio.

Michael is playing in the poker tournament, touring the control tour at the Roanoke Airport, and doing a men's drop-in singing event. He's also taking Alex on a tour of Dixie Caverns.

Alex is doing the Dixie Caverns trip with Michael and taking PJ Yoga for Kids M-Th night at bedtime.

Colin is planning to nurse a lot, sleep, and chew on rattles. We won't be using the SUUSI childcare for him. He's eligible - they'll take babies of any age - but I just think he's too young. It'll make for a very different kind of SUUSI, to have a 5-month-old with us, but I think we'll have fun anyway.

Here's the "If I could..." edition. You guys ask good questions.

kazoogrrl: If you worked at Colonial Williamsburg, you would be what kind of historical reenactor, and why?

If we are fantasizing that I would have any skills I might need to obtain such a position, I'd like to be in the dressmakers'/milliners' shop, preferably focusing on fine embroidery. When we were there in November, there was a woman sitting in a sunny window embroidering the most stunning piece of white-on-white lace. I really enjoy fine needlework, but I don't have much time (okay, any time) to work on it. It would be pleasant to have a lot of time to develop those skills and share them with others, in a mellow and conversational setting.

If we're thinking about positions I might legitimately be qualified for, I'd probably wind up doing historical dance performance. Which is funny, because I'm about the least athletic or graceful person ever, under ordinary circumstances. But I've done quite a bit of English Country Dancing, and I love it, and I'm good at it.

pameladean: What are three things you'd do to your house if you could?

0. Buy it. I would love to own this house instead of renting it. But I know that's not what you meant, so I'm making it #0.

1. Put decking on the porch outside our bedroom, so that it can be walked on without damaging the roof surface. I understand why our landlord never did that - that short short railing would create a massive liability risk, and you couldn't put a real, safe-height railing in because the historical preservation people would throw a fit.

2. Insulate the kitchen and the pantry. They're just kind of hanging off the back of the house, with nothing underneath them and nothing around them, and they get so cold in the winter that for a while the olive oil congealed.

3. Rip out the 70's-era paneling and dropped ceiling in the third floor guest room. Then, eventually, we could convert it to our bedroom and turn our gorgeous current bedroom, with its floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelves, into a study for the whole family. Right now our desks are crammed into the dining room instead.

moobabe: If you could do anything (job/hobby/etc) that you can't or don't do right now, what would it be?

Homeschool. This is in the works for a year and a half from now, when Alex is scheduled to start kindergarten. Michael and I hope to both work part-time and both share in the homeschooling. I'd kind of like to get started sooner, although I recognize that the older Colin is when we start the easier things will be. (Oops, here I am bringing in kids/parenting again, and violating the purpose of the meme.)

duanekc: If you had unlimited time and budget, would you travel? Where, and why? With or without family? Are there places you would like to see just by yourself, or is traveling without family unthinkable?

Oh, gosh. I haven't traveled that much, and I have a long list of places I'd like to go. I would love to go on safari in Africa. I'd like to see Egypt and Petra. I would like to do a rain forest/beach/snorkeling trip in central America. I would like to go on a cruise. I would like to cross the US and Canada by transcontinental rail. I would like to visit Vietnam. I would like to take the kids to Disneyworld.

I don't like to leave my kids for longer than a few days - at least, I can't imagine doing that until they're much older. So although I see definite advantages to familyless travel that'd be pretty far in my future. I think it will start being feasible for us to do significant travel when Colin is about the age that Alex is now. I have this family adventure travel site bookmarked, and it is a frequent stop for fantasizing.

castiron: What craft skill (where craft could be anything from sewing to blacksmithing to origami to small engine repair) would you most like to learn?

Quilting.

johnpalmer: Is there any one thing that you wish you had blogged about, but even if you were blogging, it's been *way* too long, so you can't blog about it now... but oh, it was *important*, and you really wanted to say something about it!

What was it? What did you want to say?

I wish I had finished my series on physician-assisted suicide, because it's a topic that I think many, many smart and ethical and well-meaning people are misguided about. I may be getting back to doing some writing on that in the near future.

So, on Christmas afternoon we flew to Memphis to spend the long weekend with Michael's father. That had always been in the plan. Somehow what didn't make it into my mental picture of the plan was that we would have essentially zero time on Christmas to do anything other than family presents and then making the trip happen. Like, for example, answering people's e-mails, or warning anyone that we were going to be away and out of contact, or any of those kinds of things. So: sorry that we dropped off the face of the earth like that.

It was a pretty hard visit. Michael's stepmother was in the hospital when we arrived, with diverticulitis, and wasn't released until Saturday. Michael's father isn't doing very well either, although I suppose he's doing better than one might expect given all that happened last August, when we thought Michael was potentially rushing to a deathbed. He's very weak and tired. His blood count keeps dropping inexplicably; he had a transfusion of two units of blood the week before Christmas, and told us that was the only thing keeping him on his feet.

I cooked some monster Southern-style breakfasts and tried, mostly fruitlessly, to keep Michael's father (and his stepmother, when she got home) from exerting themselves on household responsibilities. I tried to create and protect opportunities for Michael and his dad to be together. Alex was much more open and friendly with her Poppy than she has been before, which was nice to see, and I did what I could to promote that. I did a lot of playing with Alex's Christmas toys. I did get a fair amount of rest, at least. Michael's father and stepfather typically went to bed at the same time as Alex, so our evenings were very quiet and relaxed.

I tried to make more allowances than usual for Michael's stepmother, because she was ill and tired and in pain. But really she just seemed like her typically unpleasant self. For the record, in case anyone around here is unclear: it is not okay to predict that a pregnant woman is about to go into labor prematurely. It is even less okay to harp on it to the extent that it begins to prey on the pregnant woman's hormonally-fragile peace of mind even though she knows that she shouldn't pay any attention to you. And when you know that the pregnant woman's last pregnancy ended in disaster? It is really absolutely even less okay, if that's possible.

I'm just saying.

So we're home, later than expected because of some baggage snarls at the airport. The house is a disaster area because we didn't have time to pick up before we left. Alex didn't get to bed until almost 11 - who knows when she'll be up tomorrow. And I got home to a stack of increasingly upset e-mails and phone messages from Lydia, who apparently forgot that (a) I was going to be out of town until Monday, and (b) she had previously expressed no problems with my travel plans and, indeed, had not seemed particularly concerned about whether I was going to be in this week at all.

So, you know, I think tomorrow's going to be a bit of a mess. But it's going to be okay. We have great plans for later in the week, including friend-visiting and dinner-date-with-babysitting and, potentially, couch-buying.

This was our last day of vacation. Tomorrow morning we'll drive home, visiting bosssio and family on the way. Which is probably just as well, because tomorrow's supposed to be chilly and rainy. Today was cold enough - in the upper 40s most of the day, and windy. But we had a good time anyway. ( Read more... )

Having a wonderful time. ( Read more... )