The Number Field

A wash of important events over the past month has meant that I've spent more time planning for and being a part of things, and consequently have had less time for reflecting and writing about them. Family has been the common thread for the three major events; along with all the good time spent with family members, I've enjoyed observing the different stages of life commemorated by the events.

First was the wedding of Luke and Jessica, which for me started with his bachelor party, if I can call it that--it was just the two of us on a geocaching adventure. We found the cache, but it was harder than I thought, giving us lots of time for manly discussion. The rest of the wedding involved our whole family, and Jessica's too. The pre-wedding picnic was the first time in several years that all of my siblings were together. The wedding itself, of course, was even more beautiful than the pictures made it look. Jenny and I spent time remembering our own wedding, and even Elena wanted to talk about getting married.

Not long after that, we packed into the car for a trip to see Jenny's family, for Nick's graduation and Eagle Scout Court of Honor. Our trip went as smoothly as we could have hoped, but it was still somewhat difficult for Jenny, due to the advancing pregnancy. She bore the burden well, because we wanted to support Nick. I was impressed by how many people attended the graduation--the graduates only numbered about two hundred, but their families and friends filled a considerable portion of a large sports arena.

Nick's Court of Honor had a much smaller scale, which allowed us to celebrate his accomplishments in detail. I was honored to have a small part in the ceremony. Nick is a good young man, and we wish him the best in college. Both Jenny and I had good high school experiences, but we're old enough now to realize that graduation from high school is more of a beginning than an ending.

The final event had special significance for Elena, because she got to spend lots of time with John and Emily's children--the only cousins she hadn't met before. Although last minute changes to their travel plans meant that their trip was shorter than planned, we got together for Father's Day and then again the following weekend.

Grandma invited Elena to come spend time with her cousins (and some aunts and uncles too) on Saturday and into Sunday. She had a tremendous time with them. They went for a hike and played in a river. Matthew and Jacob are old enough to treat her very well, and Danny is a year older but about the same size to be a good playmate--Grandma even caught them holding hands at church. Elena loves Baby Clara, and handles herself around her pretty well. I think our gentleness and baby preparation training with Jewel is paying off.

It's always an honor to participate in a baby's blessing. Before the actual blessing, John and Emily shared some touching words about what family means to them. Clara has great parents and big brothers. Soon enough, we'll have baby Moonbeam with us. Holding Clara helped me think back to Elena's early days and look forward to what's in our immediate future. It's sure to be an adventure.

As Elena grows, we have fewer 'firsts,' but they become more substantial. This weekend we went on our first camping trip, with a group of people from church. Jenny might have hoped that one of us wouldn't have a great time, so that we would be less likely to go again. But Elena slept a good amount, which meant that I had a good time. Gran Ann came to visit in the evening and morning so I had time to set up and tear down camp without having to worry about Elena, which made things easier.

Elena had a good time for any number of reasons. We ate hot dogs and marshmallows, and drank juice. We were close enough to the swing set that we could go after dinner and before breakfast. We chased fireflies with all the other kids when it started to get dark. Perhaps most importantly, she got to throw rocks, sticks, and sand into the water for as long as she wanted.

On our morning hike down to the water, we were at the front of the group. I saw a deer ahead of us and pointed it out to Elena. It was startled by our noise and went bounding off through the forest. I told Elena "we scared the deer, so it ran away." She responded with "the deer wasn't scared, it was happy--it was jumping!"

Happy father's day to all! Here's hoping that you have many happy family camp outs.

One recent evening Elena looked up in the sky and saw a sliver of moon. She pointed at it, like she usually does, and said "moon!" Then she took another look and said "moon broken?" Of course, she's seen the moon like this many times before, but this was the first time that she noticed the difference. It shows that she's increasingly fascinated by things that are broken, lost, or otherwise not right.

On a different evening last week, we told Elena to go downstairs and get her blanket as she started to prepare for bedtime. Not long afterward she came into our room with the blanket in tow and a quivering lip. She held it out to us and sadly said "blankey broken." True enough, it had a substantial L-shaped rip in the shell layer of fabric. It must have caught on something pointy; since it's been so well loved, it was more susceptible to tearing.

Life goes on--Elena continues to carry the blanket everywhere and usually doesn't remember that there's a problem. We're trying to come up with a strategy for repairing it, but need to take action soon to prevent the damage from spreading. I thought that a simple exterior patch could work, if we could find some similar fabric. Jenny's mother suggested a more sophisticated approach: ironing on a patch from the inside, then whip stitching around the damaged area to prevent fraying. We're open to other suggestions, if any seamstresses or parents would like to weigh in with what you did in similar situations.

While it was clear that the blanket was broken, Elena can also recognize when something is missing. We were on a regular grocery trip. Elena and I dropped Jenny off at Wegmans while we went to pick up a few things at Costco. When we finished purchasing our items, we walked over to Wegmans instead of driving.

Elena had been wearing and playing with my watch, which I had almost forgotten, but occasionally I saw it on her wrist and was glad to see she still had it. After helping Jenny get the rest of the items on her list, I chose to take Elena back to the car instead of waiting in the checkout line; I figured that getting the car would take the right amount of time, since it was parked far away.

Before we made our exit Elena wanted to spend some time with the prominent display of summer items, guaranteed to give you a fun summer evening. She and Jenny sat on a pair of adult- and child-sized folding chairs for a minute before I whisked her away, horsey-back style. To make good time I galloped over to our car, making her giggle with each bounce. As I buckled the car seat, I saw that my watch was gone. I asked her about it, and I think she said "inside," but I didn't listen.

We drove over to where Jenny had the groceries. I told her the watch was lost, and set about retracing our steps. I reasoned that the bouncy ride had caused the watch to fall off Elena's wrist, but it wasn't anywhere outside. Then I remembered what Elena had said, and headed back into the store, scanning the floor as I walked. I saw the folding chairs from a distance and was inspired to walk over to them, where I immediately found my watch, carefully placed in the cupholder pocket on the arm of the chair where Elena had been sitting.

When I returned to the car, I asked Elena for more details about the watch, and I'm pretty sure that she said something about the chair. I didn't get angry at her, but I did try to explain to her that it was important to take care of things you were holding, especially if they were borrowed. I know that this is a more advanced concept, and don't expect her to understand right away.

Even the idea of brokenness appeals to Elena. On Sunday, after a long drive home from Grandma's house, Jenny and I were extremely tired. Elena had napped in the car, so she wanted to play. I laid down on the couch so I would at least be nearby if she needed me, but soon she was up on there with me, bouncing around. I reminded her that she wasn't supposed to even stand up on the couch, and soon after I heard her speaking rhythmically and realized that she was reciting snippets of "No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed." She didn't know all of it, so I sang a few rounds of it to her and she caught right on.

After that, it was non-stop monkeys jumping on beds for a day or two. Elena still didn't know all the words perfectly, but she understood the idea. Her favorite line to say, and ours to hear, was when the doctor said "no way more monkeys jumping on the bed!" Although it's died down in the past day, I hope that I can introduce more math through the monkey chant. For starters, maybe more than one monkey will fall off the bed at a time, so we can talk about subtraction. If that goes well, I might risk the infinite song that could result if negative monkeys start jumping on the bed.

On Monday we went for a walk in the evening. The moon, now almost full, was rising and I pointed it out to Elena. She saw it and called out "hi Moon!" I asked her if it was broken, and she said no. I wonder what she makes of that? It's too bad that the recent lunar eclipse wasn't visible in our part of the world.

It's crunch time for Moonbeam--we're now in the thirtieth week, which means he could be arriving in about two months, if his schedule is the same as Elena's. This time around we're trying to do a better job with the timing of all the important pre-baby events. In particular, with Elena we took a tour of the hospital way too early, and it overwhelmed Jenny. Last week we judged it was the right time to get to know the hospital, so Jenny scheduled a visit. I'm glad that she did; we got lots of useful information.

Our learning started before we even got to the hospital, as we had to locate it first. We had looked at it on the map, but it's always better to do at least one run in person. Under good conditions, we're less than 25 minutes away. In the event of bad conditions, which are unlikely during the height of the vacation season, there are at least two good alternate routes that should have different traffic profiles. The hospital makes it easy to check in once we arrive: there's close parking and even a free valet service that runs during daytime hours.

Our tour guide was clearly extremely competent. She was waiting at the door to check everyone in, and after checking off names the first thing she did was point the pregnant women towards the bathroom. She told us that the entrance we were using was brand new; the hospital is expanding and the beautiful new lobby where we waited has only been open for a few weeks. The visitor policy also seemed to be a new, or at least different, feature of this hospital. They don't restrict visiting hours, but limit the number of visitors to five at any one time, and the father is one of the five. For some reason siblings don't count towards the total. It's a moot point for us--we don't want visitors until after Moonbeam arrives, and we don't want big groups.

At various times the guide stopped to allow us to ask questions. After she finished telling us about what we needed to bring to the hospital and what, including diapers, we could leave at home, I decided to throw something out there. I asked what diaper sizes they had in stock--because our first baby didn't fit in the newborn size. She didn't even pause before saying that they have all sizes in stock, so they can handle the kids that are born to be football players.

The last stop on the tour was the Labor and Delivery room. Even though it was in a different hospital halfway across the country, there were enough similarities that it brought back strong memories. The tour guide paused her spiel to ask Jenny if she was okay, or if she needed to sit down. The moment passed and everything was okay; it wasn't too overwhelming after all.

There are a variety of other minor details that I noticed, mostly because they represented differences between this hospital and the one where Elena was born. For one thing, there's a daily charge to watch the television, which seems like a bum deal, but we'll probably pony up for it, because there won't be much else that Jenny can do. Also, the cafeteria doesn't provide meals for the father. There is a Subway and a Chick-Fil-A located inside the hospital. After Elena was born, the only thing Jenny really wanted was a Chick-Fil-A milkshake, and I think she's already looking forward to a repeat of that post-labor treat, so it's good to know that it will be easy to obtain.

This book is one of the few that I specifically remember from my own childhood; I consider it to be the pinnacle of children's literature. When Jenny found it at the Goodwill store a few months ago and bought it for me to read to Elena, I was very excited. I remember reading the book, but I don't remember what I thought about it, so I wanted to see how Elena would interact with the book.

It is an interactive book. It's told in first-person singular, by Grover--who is decidedly aware that he is a character in a book and that he can directly address the reader. He appeals to the reader not to turn the pages, because that brings both of them closer to the end of the book. According to the book's title, there's a monster there. Grover even tries various things to keep the reader from turning the page.

Elena doesn't seem to think it's odd that none of the characters in her other books talk directly to her, but Grover does. I don't know what to make of the fact that when I try to mediate between her and Grover, she always elects to turn the page. Today I told her that Grover was my friend, and he was asking very nicely for us not to turn the last page, but she wouldn't be swayed.

There are a couple of possible interpretations. It might seem like she's carrying out a small-scale Milgram experiment on Grover, compelled to turn pages because that's what we always do with books, but I don't think that's it. Instead, I think that she maintains some distance from the book's premise--she only partially suspends her disbelief. She's read the book before, she knows what happens at the end, and (without spoiling anything) she's fine with the consequences that Grover must endure. Also, she's not scared of monsters.

Elena has friends, which surprises me because she's still so young. She recognizes them, their parents, and often the places where they live. She looks forward to seeing them at church and when they get together during the week. She likes to hug and hold hands. But she and her friends still don't usually know how to play together. They don't like to share toys, and even worse, often only want to play with something because the other child is using it--once the friend abandons interest, Elena no longer wants to take her turn, no matter how insistent she was that she needed that thing just a few moments before. All of this is expected toddler behavior, and we'd be surprised of she acted differently.

Elena's best friend, especially when measured by how easily they play together, may be her cousin Ginny. When we last saw Ginny almost two years ago, all she and Elena could do was roll around on blankets, but there was already a special connection. Now that they're both running and playing, it was nice to see that the connection is still there. Ginny and her parents Heidi and Gerrit all flew in for the wedding, then Heidi and Ginny stayed for the rest of the week so we got to see them one more time.

We met them at the pre-wedding picnic. Heidi said that each time a new car drove by, Ginny asked if Elena was in it. Ginny is an avid follower of this blog, and always likes to look at the pictures. I'm sorry to say that we don't spend as much time looking at their blog; I need to do better at that.

To see them play together with so little conflict was amazing. I don't know how to account for it; although they're close in age, that can't be the only factor. They followed each other around the playground, took turns on the slide, and when Ginny wanted to throw rocks in the water, Elena was right there with her--not stealing Ginny's rocks, but finding her own. The only time Elena made Ginny cry was when she wanted Ginny to come over to the other part of the playground. Elena grabbed her hand and started tugging before Ginny realized what was going on, which upset her. But it was only two minutes later that they were playing again.

And so it was for the rest of the weekend. At the wedding, they worked together to fill a watering can with croquet balls. The next evening everyone came to our house for dinner. Elena did get a little jealous as Ginny played with her toys, but that's unavoidable. They did have some very fun peekaboo time with Aunt Leisa. The following Saturday we met them at an art gallery downtown, after which we had a picnic lunch in the park. The park had a big circular fountain--the water wasn't flowing, but the outside border was like a racetrack for the little girls. They just ran and ran and ran.

After parting, Ginny had to get on a plane and head home. We don't know when we'll see her again, but we know that Elena will have fun when we do. Elena does sometimes talk about going on an airplane; maybe she'll add into her narrative the idea that she wants to visit her cousin as part of the plane trip.

It was a good thing that Jenny requested blueberry muffins for breakfast on my vacation day, because we forgot to run the dishwasher and were almost out of silverware. Elena was a big help, but mostly she liked cleaning up the batter.

The previous evening, Elena helped us bake snickerdoodles for a Memorial Day picnic. I didn't get any photos; my hands were too sugary--Jenny made the dough, then I rolled it into balls and helped Elena coat them in cinnamon sugar. She liked shaking the sugar bowl more than rolling the dough around. Our cookies were a mere sideshow at the desert picnic. A cupcake contest took center stage--there were some serious entries. Check my flickr page for more examples.

This extremely busy week has tired me out. It's worth it--every day, there have been specific moments when I marveled at how Elena is growing, and I think that all the things we do together contribute to her development. I'll illustrate with just one vignette from the beginning of the week.

According to Jenny, Elena's become a planner. Her last thoughts before nap time often turn to ideas about what she's going to do afterward. On Monday, she decided that she and I were going to go for a run after she woke up, which Jenny relayed to me when we spoke to each other on the phone. At some point Jenny also told Elena that they would go to the store and get a treat.

I got home later than I had hoped and was already tired, then we had some other things to do, and all of a sudden we were eating a late dinner and hadn't gone for a run. Before dinner I told Elena that we could probably do one of the two things but not both. Then during dinner I had an idea. A seasonal ice cream stand is located near us, and I realized that if we ran one of our normal routes in the opposite direction we could make the run there a good distance. Elena was so happy to hear that we could go for a run and still go to the ice cream store, as she calls it.

We made it there right on schedule. Elena cheered me up the hills again, and needed even less prompting. She was motivated by the hope of ice cream. Jenny drove down and met us; she's the one who suggested the treat, and I wouldn't have been able to run back home very well after the treat. Elena behaved herself very well, whether it was standing in line, observing the other patrons while we ate, or taking our empty cups and licked-clean spoons to the trash can without us even asking her. My only fear is that she might assume that future runs will also include an ice cream stop. It might take her a few trips to flush that idea out of her system.

Spring is the season of cleaning and geting rid of extra stuff, which means yard sales, thrift store donations, and consignment. That's a good thing, because we need to equip ourselves for Moonbeam's arrival. We're doing well as we try to balance budget against acquisition, thanks to Jenny's multifaceted strategy. It probably takes more work than she lets on, but she enjoys it and it's hard to argue with the results.

She monitors the local freecycle mailing list for things we need. We live in a good community for the freecycle model, which means that there are lots of active participants. It's a double-edged sword: even though lots of items are listed, it's easy to lose out on good items when someone else gets in first. In the past few weeks, Jenny picked up a big box of baby clothes, a new diaper bag, and best of all, a high chair that's much newer and nicer than the one we had been using. Elena loves her new high chair, but she noticed that her old one was by the front door--Jenny had listed it on freecycle and to Elena's dismay, it got picked up this morning.

It isn't as easy for us to go for long, leisurely yard sale excursions as it was before Elena, but we still make an effort. A few weeks ago our church participated in a community-wide day of service. I painted benches in a local park, and Jenny and Elena supported the projects by taking cookies and pictures. On the way home they stopped at a fundraising yard sale outside of a church. The organizers were wrapping things up, so everything had been marked down steeply. Jenny filled a whole bag with clothes for Elena and Moonbeam, but it only cost her three dollars for the whole thing--literally pennies for each item of clothing.

When we found out that Moonbeam was a boy, Jenny decided that we should divest ourselves of some of Elena's saved baby clothes, mostly larger sizes * . She signed up for a semi-annual consignment sale we had attended last fall. It's a well-run program, but they have high standards. All the clothes had to be clean and in good condition. Jenny had to enter them into an online inventory in advance, then print out price tags and pin them to everything. Then she had to go to the event site at a scheduled time to hang everything up in its designated category. Even though it seems like a lot, it gets good results; many of our items sold, and we had the fun of seeing the progress as they updated Jenny's inventory page during the sale. Jenny even signed up for a volunteer shift, which increased our commission a few percentage points.

In addition to clothes, we consigned some big toys--a rocking motorcycle and a vintage tricycle--in our attic. They must have been abandoned by a previous tenant. After our landlady told us we could dispose of them how we chose, we entered them into the sale. Elena had fun playing with them for a few days, but she was able to let go of them easily when it was time to take them away. The rocking motorcycle in particular contributed to the bottom line, and Jenny was happy to see it sell while she was working the checkout line.

Consignment isn't just about selling; there's also a buying aspect. As a consigner and volunteer, Jenny got to go to the pre-sale, and picked up some great stuff. Not surprisingly, she found some clothes, although she noted that even cute boy clothes are never as much fun as girl clothes. Even better, she found a Pack-N-Play at a great price. We already have one Pack-N-Play, but this one converts to a bassinet and has a changing table attachment, so it will be far more useful with a newborn. If anyone in the area wants to take the other one off our hands, please let me know. It's still in good condition! Otherwise, it might end up as part of the circle of thrift, as we let it go through craigslist, freecycle, or the next consignment sale.

Thanks to the consignment sale, our baby budget is in the black. We're searching for a couple of big-ticket items, but don't have any leads on where to get them used for a good price. In particular, we're looking for hints and tips on where to get a comfortable recliner and a wooden rocking chair.

* We have a standing rule not even to discuss the possibility of future children while in the midst of a pregnancy, but these are clothes that, even if another girl were to join our family, wouldn't be worn for at least five years.

The bride---beautiful. The groom---nervous. The ceremony---touching. The reception---vintage.

Good luck to them as they start a life together!