The Family *roll

Oh my word Spring is finally here. We (finally) have no snow. We now have grass and crocuses and daffodils abound. Dan and I are back at work in the garden and have high hopes for not disgracing our neighbors this year. Eleanor loves being outside and we had a great weekend doing yard work.

Eleanor was really into helping out:

We taught her to pick up pine cones, which she was really psyched about.

But then she put all the pine cones in her car seat while we weren’t watching:



The Counterfactuals are in the studio! The studio just so happens to be the basement of our house. Even so, we have very high hopes for the recording: Jason really knows what he’s doing and early results are super promising. Hopefully we’ll be done before the summer is over, but things are going slowly, in part because we have, oh you know, jobs, families and impending families and in part because we’re being very deliberate about the parts of each song. With recording we have the luxury of recording many, many tracks. When we play live, we have whatever we can do with two people. That leads to multitasking, particularly on my part: I play bass drum and hi-hat with my feet, while singing and playing guitar.

Not bad, right? Well, we saw this guy in the NYC subway when we were there:

He would probably be the biggest act in Northfield if he lived here.

Multitasking mastery.

My father and stepmother are in town for the week to take care of Ellie while daycare is closed for new new Mommy’s March break. My father has spent significant portions of the past two days showing Eleanor his stock portfolio. She loves it. He is teaching her new ways to tell the difference between “green” and “red.” When I came home from work today, she was clawing at his computer, demanding “stocks! stocks!”.

I have never worked for a for-profit organization. In fact, my last job was for a hospital that was hemorrhaging remarkable amounts of money and my current grant-funded organization employs a whopping 3 people, including me. My entire business experience consists of a 3-month-long Junior Achievement project in 9th grade which involved manufacturing and selling some shockingly shoddy trivets to family members. Daniel has had, oh, one job. And, thankfully, Carleton doesn’t ask him to chip in on budgeting decisions. We are 403B type people. We think the nice gentleman that TIAA-CREF lets you talk to for free is a sharp financial planner. We have a copy of “Mutual Funds for Dummies” at home (on his last visit, my father put a note in on his last visit urging us to never, ever buy mutual funds).We had to surreptitiously google “stock options” to understand a great deal of what my father was talking about at dinner last night.

Will things be different for Eleanor? Will her affinity for pie charts on my father’s netbook morph into a lifelong career in business? Will she make money? Wear a suit? Every day? To college? To bed?

My word.

We got back yesterday from a four day trip to New York City, where we met my parents. While we have both been to New York since Em moved from there to Chicago in 2003, we haven’t been there together since then. We had an amazing time.

First of all, Eleanor was a champ the entire time, even during both plane trips. We thought she might be overwhelmed by all the people and the tall buildings and the like, but she didn’t bat an eye. We spent lots of time in playgrounds in Central and Riverside Parks, where Eleanor climbed, slid and ran here and there. We ate literally every morning at Absolute Bagels, where Eleanor developed a deep love for NY bagels, a love that we will have a hard time satisfying in Northfield. My mother held Ellie up to the apartment’s windows each time a fire truck went by, with Eleanor taking great delight in someone’s misfortune (but not under that description). She also made a point of squealing “PIGEONS!” whenever we saw pigeons which, of course, was often. As a longtime pigeon fan, never have I been prouder.

One night, Emily and I took the subway to the Brooklyn-side of the Brooklyn Bridge and walked back to Manhattan — one of our favorite New York activities. We then wended our way up to Alphabet City, stopping for amazingly good dumplings along the way at a place with a cracked service window and space for no more than 5 people at a time.

The next day, we headed off to Williamsburg and Greenpoint, enjoying hip vegetarian food, hip hot dogs, hip bbq (where I drank hip Rye) and hip stores. That night, we saw some members of the Elephant 6 collective at the Knitting Factory (no Jeff Mangum, sadly). Never have we been so cool. (And it is super cool to talk about how cool you are. Everyone in Williamsburg is doing it. Trust me.)

The next day we spent the afternoon at the Met, lingering in the period rooms, romping through European Art 1400-1800 and relaxing at the Egyptian temple.

How, pray tell, were we able to do this with a toddler in tow? The secret is: we didn’t. Enter the heroes of the trip: my parents, and my mother in particular. Lu stayed in three of the four nights we were there so Emily and I could go out (we got a babysitter and all went out the fourth night). She also took Eleanor every morning so we could sleep in. And she took her for two afternoons. It was so wonderful being able to spend time with Eleanor in New York and then…not spending time with Eleanor in New York. Thanks a million Mom — you really made the trip for us.

Our friend Dan H. coined the term “dad style” to refer to anything remotely lame, prematurely middle-aged or outdated we do. For example, Dan H. called our Subaru’s snow tires “total dad style.” Daniel’s winter coat (which may or may not be a woman’s coat but sure does keep him warm): dad style. Daniel complaining about taking out the garbage: complete dad style.

It’s a gender specific term; I have been accused of mom-style behaviors. Today I really outdid myself on the mom style front: a group of teenaged boys came into the cafe where I was studying. The town’s grocery store has recently switched to clear bags (I’m surprised this change in store policy wasn’t in the paper (this story made it, after all)) and each of the boys came in with one or two bags from the grocery store. The bags were filled with large boxes of Pop-Tarts, caffeinated energy drinks, potato chips, candy bars, sodas, etc.

Without really thinking about what I was about to do, I caught one of the boy’s eyes and said “It looks like you’re having the junk food Olympics!” First there was an awkward pause. Then there was the look of derision. And then, finally, he slowly disengaged eye contact and returned to unwrapping his first of many un-toasted Pop-Tarts.

Mom-style or what?

Dan got caught out in some (pretty endearing) dad style behavior in his class on Tuesday. Dan has this t-shirt from Threadless. Pretty cool, right? Not dad style at all. I mean, we used to live around the corner from the Threadless warehouse in Chicago. We are hip. Well, we were hip because…wait for it… Eleanor has the matching t-shirt. On Tuesday morning, Eleanor insisted that she and Dan wear their “quirl! quirl!” t-shirts. Dan happily obliged and then put a sweater over his actually pretty dorky, Dad-style t-shirt. When he took his sweater off during class, his students erupted in laughter. When I picked him up later, he accosted a student and insisted on showing her Eleanor’s matching t-shirt in order to explain why he is wearing a shirt with a squirrel on it. Dorky layered with dad style.

Nice.

I’m off to Ottawa for Bridget’s wedding tomorrow after class. Dan and Ellie are on their own for the first time (Dan has had 3 trips away from home since Ellie was born). There is only 1 banana left in the house. I am taking the cellphone. Two thirds of daycare ishome sick with a fever. Youtube videos of monkeys have ceased to exist. No, wait: that last thing isn’t true. I guess they’ll do fine.

And me? I bought an appealing paperback, have an iPhone loaded with good music and pathophysiology lectures and pictures of Eleanor and Dan. I also have a weekend full of best friends and celebration to look forward to. I guess I’ll do fine, too.