Party Girl

It's my birthday! I'm having a party!

She’s one! And what a lot she has accomplished! She has learned to walk and copy sounds. She’s grown some teeth, and she holds her own with all the big boys around.  In fact, she has charmed the socks off of them. And all of us!

She walks, and talks, and says Mama.

William thinks she is the cutest, funniest little thing he’s ever seen. Better than a puppy. Better than Legos. Better than Poptropica. From the look of things, she feels the same about him.

In good hands.

The photographer's assistant.

In hysterics watching Celeste eat her birthday cake, and egging her on to make an even bigger mess.

And laughing with good reason.

The beginning of the mess.

The other boys are more interested in TV than watching Celeste adorn herself with chocolate.

It gets worse.

The festivities will be interrupted while the life of the party heads to the bathtub.

Chocolate is good for what ails you.

Happy birthday, A-less’, as the little boys call you. YOU are good for anything that ails anyone!

Dino-mite Birthday!

Dinosaur cake by Sweet Sixteen

It has been the year of the dinosaur for Karsten. Doesn’t every child go through a dinosaur obsession? He was a ‘nice’ dinosaur for Halloween,  he wanted a dinosaur birthday party when he turned three in September, and he can be seen most of the time carrying a dinosaur around in his hand. This is a blog post about his three year dinosaur birthday party, a little late. My delay has nothing to do with the fact that we celebrated in style. It’s just that I want to write about Celeste’s one year November birthday before 2009 is up, and when that’s done, I will have recorded the birthday parties for every grandchild but Karsten! That will not do!

The fact is, I made a poor photographic equipment choice, and my pictures of Karsten’s dinosaur party at Mafiaoza’s Pizza are not up to standards. In an effort to keep things simple, I decided to take only one lens to the restaurant. Carrying too much equipment around is a drag, but not nearly as frustrating as having only one lens that is not appropriate for the conditions. The light 50mm prime lens, great as it is for portraits and for keeping things simple, is not the lens you want when you are seated at a table by a window with the late afternoon sun streaming in, and  you have no room to get up and  move back to get everyone in a picture without glare.  You cannot coax a prime lens into being a zoom. I tried it a hundred times at Karsten’s party.

William sitting by the window.

I will have to do the best I can with what I’ve got. The children get a kick out of seeing themselves in my posts, and a major reason for writing this blog is to create a record of events that they will enjoy as they grow. Leaving out Karsten’s three year old dinosaur party is not an option.

All shopping for this birthday party could be done at the dinosaur store!

William and Walker help Karsten unwrap his presents.

At Mafiaoza's they give the children dough to play with while they're waiting for their pizza. Great fun. Really messy.

If you are given dough at a dinosaur pizza party, what is the logical thing to do with it?

You wrap your dinosaurs in the dough, of course.

Feeding time at Jurassic Park

Mom

Dad

Usable photos. But, oh, the ones that got away! Karsten was unconcerned about my camera problems. But, when he’s eight, or ten, will he ask me why there are so few pictures of his third birthday party? I’ll just have to tell him that they became extinct.

Music, Music, Music

Mary, 5 years old with band-aid on elbow, at our wedding

The e-vite said Mary was turning fifty! How could it be? We guessed we’d better plan to drive the twelve hundred miles it would take to get us to the party and back, just to be sure such a thing could really be happening. Silly of us, because, who would say they were turning fifty if they weren’t?

Mary at nifty fifty

We planned a completely relaxing trip, no hurrying, no leaving before daylight, no racing to drive twelve hours in one day. Things start to slow down around fifty (we should know), so our plan seemed appropriate for the occasion. I charged up the long forgotten iPod, bought a new backseat cooler to replace the one my son-in-law packed fish in last summer (yuck!), dug the framed Wolverine signed by Bo Schembechler and Don Canham out of storage to present as a proper gift at a party with a U of M/Go Blue theme, rounded up suitable clothing to wear in maize and blue with block M on it, and we were ready to go!

It’s hard not to think of milestone events when you’re on your way to a birthday celebrating a significant number. Even harder when you’re listening to the music of your life. My iPod had been gathering dust for several years. Wow, how I’ve missed my tunes!

My iPod, ancient though it is, was so happy to be in use again that it simply outdid itself, playing music that alternately made me want to dance and cry, music so closely associated with certain events, that just hearing the opening notes flooded me with forgotten memories.  Memories even older than fifty years!

It first dawned on me that my iPod was messing with my mind when Peggy Lee started to sing. She isn’t my favorite, except for Steam Heat, but I added her to the iPod because my Dad loved her and all the Big Band songs so much. I could see him dancing his little waltz two step with my Mom in the kitchen, same as they did in high school when they listened to Goodman, the Dorseys and Count Basie. The iPod was making me weepy. Miss you, Dad.

Dad always loved the music of his youth, and wasn’t about to adopt the music of mine when it came along. He was openly contemptuous of Elvis, and tolerated the Beatles as they didn’t seem as sinister as Elvis the Pelvis. Chuck Berry made him think an entire generation was lost. I must say I couldn’t really understand any of Chuck Berry’s words after he saw Maybelline in that coup deville, but I loved the song. Dad and I didn’t part ways on many things, but music was one. Sam Cooke Havin’ A Party, Johhny Mathis and the make-out songs, the Platters My Prayer and You Who Who’ve Got the Maaaaa Gic Touch, the Beach Boys Catch a Wave, and the Coasters Yakety Yak and Poison I-i-i-v-y filled the airways of my youth. If you liked something on the radio, you could go to the record store and buy it on a new media type called a 45. Our record players had arms and the spindle released the discs one at a time.  Scratches on favorites always sent the needle skittering over the grooves, similar to digital pixels breaking up, I guess.

I watched American Bandstand on a tiny little TV screen, still black and white, feeling like I knew Arlene and Kenny, Carole and Nick as well as I knew people in my own high school. We learned the Hand Jive and the Stroll, but not much of the Waltz two step. The songs of that era played on my iPod, calling to mind penny loafers, cardigans buttoned backwards, pop-it beads and Fire and Ice lipsick, as we drove toward Virginia on I-40 fifty years later.

We covered the miles and the iPod shuffled. Suddenly Perry Como was singing, ‘Til the End of Time. There’s a sometimes startling mix on my iPod, but there is one Como song that is not programmed into it. In early December of 1965, my husband and I, married less than a year, left Marine Corps Basic School at Quantico, VA, and  headed for his first post with the 2nd Marines at LeJeune, NC. I was as homesick as a person could be, but hanging on because we were going home for Christmas. For the time being we were heading deeper into the strange land called the South, with bigger, gaudier Magnolia trees, even less intelligible accents and air that held the faint, sweet smell of decaying wood. I see things differently now, but at the time I was an alien in a foreign land. I remember sitting in the car while he checked into base. He got back in the car and said, as gently as he could, that there was good news and bad news. We would have base housing with a real heater, but Viet Nam was building up (a surge? everything new is old again!), and all Christmas leaves were cancelled. Then he switched the ignition on, and Perry Como was singing, There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays, on the radio. I’d forgotten, but he remembered, as we drove along I-40 to Mary’s birthday party, that I had been holding an ivy plant in my lap from our Quantico apartment during the whole trip. I guess it got a good watering when the dam broke. Maybe I had forgotten the plant, but I’ll never forget how homesick feels, nor how that Como song can still call out the tears after all this time.

And so it went until the iPod batteries ran down, my favorite musicians singing my life with their songs. Patsy Cline Back in Baby’s Arms, Jackie Wilson with drama and crescendo, Keith Whitley, Aretha, Roger Miller You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd, Eartha Kitt, Carol King, Waylon Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line, Neil Diamond Kentucky Woman and Sweet Caroline, Louis Armstrong, John Hiatt, Emmylou, Ray Charles, the Everlys, Etta James, Delbert McClinton, Lucinda Williams, Willie, the Tractors, James Talley, the Supremes, Statlers, Spinners, Shirelles Da Do Ron Ron, Always Sinatra, Kodachrome, Photographs and Memories, the Noir songs of Carly Simon, the Bee Gees and the entire Saturday Night Fever Album, Dancing Queen, Prine, Presley, Cole Porter, Les Paul, Dolly and Jolene, the incomparable piano poundng of Del Wood, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Blueberry Hill, Professor Longhair…………

We’re Five hundred Miles From Home, heading to Virginia where It’s Saturday Night and They’re Having a Party. Play That Funky Music and Get Down Tonight! We Are Family, so Happy, Happy Birthday, Baby Sister! When It’s Your Party, You Can Cry if You Want To. It’s All in the Game!

Am I old enough yet to play these drinking games?

An Amity Island Birthday!

Happy birthday!

It was an innocent beginning with dappled sunlight, bright balloons and happy children splashing in the wading pool as Walker celebrated his third birthday.  Only the large empty spot in the front yard hinted that something mysterious was going to happen there.

Pool boy.

Karsten arrives with presents.

Walker's Spiderman cake.

The children splashed, presents were received, and chicken nuggets, grapes, French fries and a Spiderman cake were devoured. As Walker’s guests picked up their goodie bags and left the party with their parents,  they passed a man entering the gate with a large, blue, plastic bundle on a dolly.

Setting out the chum line.

The blue bundle starts to inflate.

The blue bundle gets bigger........

.........and bigger!

BUM, bum, BUM, bum, BUM, bum…….It’s JAWS!

Brody and Quint, the shark hunters, aka William and Walker, fearlessly climb the twenty four feet into the very mouth of Jaws, and throw themselves onto the slide, testing it prior to the second birthday party of the day, William’s sixth birthday!

Jaws lives up to its reputation.

Walker meets a similar fate.

The shark hunters encounter a problem. There is a trough where the slide sections meet that is too deep to slide over, giving them a bad jolt as they come down the slide.  Walker bit his tongue twice, and both boys were in danger of whiplash, but never fear when Dad is near.  He can always figure out what to do.  And old deflated swimming pool filled the depression nicely, and things went smoothly after that.  Maybe too smoothly, and a little too slowly?  Whose idea was it to put baby oil on the surface of the slide?

For the next eight hours the boys at William’s party (no girls allowed), and then more friends and children through the evening, bounced and screamed and laughed their way down the slide over and over again, stopping only to eat William’s birthday cake and sing happy birthday to him.

William's cake.

Stopping for cake and "Happy birthday to you."

My Kind of Razzmatazz

Lucky William had a chance to visit Chicago for his sixth birthday.  Lucky me, I had a chance to visit it with him. Our birthdays are close together, so Elizabeth invited both of us to go on a business trip with her.  While she worked, he and I explored Chicago.

If he goes back a hundred times, a thousand times, he will still find something new. We hardly made a dent in the attractions, but my exhaustion level after four days told me we covered a lot of it: Navy Pier ferris wheel and swings, Children’s Museum, Shedd’s Aquarium, Lincoln Park Zoo, Millennium Park fountains and Bean, Field Museum and William’s personal favorite, the Lego Store. We hopped from plane to taxi to water taxi to city bus, and threw in some old fashioned pedestrian action as well. We saw pirates, bears, mummies, sharks, lions, dinosaurs, a tall ship, skyscrapers, a White Cheeked Gibbon that slammed into the glass where William was standing and hissed at him, and made a video starring the trash cans of Chicago!  In spite of the sights and sounds of a new, exciting city, William’s most asked question before we left the hotel was, “May I take my (Nintendo) DS with me?”

Playing Checkers at the Childrens' Museum, and ducking from the camera.

Navy Pier

Pulling away from Navy Pier on the water taxi on our way to Shedd Aquarium.

We arrived at the Shedd Aquarium and looked back at the city and Lakeshore Dr.

Shark in the Water!

The light level in the Aquarium was not a photographer’s friend, and there was no flash allowed, but I had to take a picture of the shark for William to go along with the shark tooth he bought at the Childrens’ Museum Gift Shop. We landlocked Tennesseans long for the sea, and William seems to be no exception. Chicago isn’t well known for sharks, but some strange things have been found in the Great Lakes since the St. Lawrence opened!

William and I both give the Lincoln Park Zoo our highest recommendation.

Lions....

....and Tigers....

....and Bears. Oh, my!

William got a dragon tattoo. Mine was a mythical bird.

William's entire head can fit inside a tiger's jaws!

We rode the carousel.

This is the White Cheeked Gibbon that swung back and forth and suddenly smacked into the glass where William was standing, and hissed at him. The whole crowd jumped back, but William loved it.

At the Field Museum we toured the mummy exhibit.  William wanted to see brains, of course. In the pirate ship exhibit we saw a treasure chest full of silver coins, the only sunken pirate treasure ever found, and were horrified to see and read about a gibbet, used to execute captured pirates. It is a metal cage like a straight jacket into which the pirate was locked and dangled from a pole at low tide, to wait for his death by drowning as the tide came in. I was horrified.  William didn’t seem to take it personally. It was all in a day’s work for a pirate, I guess.

Dinosaur overlooks Chicago.

Hey, there, Matey!

The Lego Store - a top attraction!

Navy Pier Swing

Navy Pier Swing and Ferris Wheel

William and E. go for the thrills.

We had the time, the time of our lives in Chi-CA-go! And so we left the windy city, in much the same way as we entered it, with William playing his Nintendo. I’ve posted the events of our trip so we can revisit and enjoy again, and to let William know what we did in case he was absorbed in Pokemon at the time.

Waiting for the plane home, and playing with the Nintendo.

Perfectly Boring

Jamie and William make plans for the uninteresting trash can video.

William and I met our friend Jamie, who lives in Chicago, outside the Field Museum. Jamie invited William to help him make a video with his iPhone camera, but William didn’t want his picture taken, as usual, and I suspect he had an overloaded brain from the dinosaurs, pirates and mummies he had just seen inside the Field.

Jamie, not one to be diverted from a creative mission, convinced William that a video had to be made. William didn’t have to be in it, and it could be something completely boring, like grass growing. In fact, nothing interesting would be allowed. A discussion followed as we wondered whether something devoid of interest would be inherently interesting, and if so, was it even possible to make a video of something uninteresting.

Field Museum

The Bean at Millennium Park

Several subjects were rejected as too interesting, but finally they settled on trash cans, and we began the long walk from the Field Museum to Millennium Park. The plan was to look for a place for lunch along the way, but I guess that was just too interesting for William and Jamie, and an empty stomach probably contributed to William’s eventual meltdown.

I hope I will see the trash can video. Garbage cans were featured in long shots and close ups. William hid behind one and slowly flipped the lid closed while Jamie filmed the mysterious self-closing trash can. The documentarian followed another trash can as it meandered down the sidewalk, William hidden on the far side doing the driving. My suggestion of panning along some wood slat fencing and ending up at a cluster of green trash cans was rejected as too interesting. William thought photographing a dumpster by the train tracks through the balusters of an overpass would be good, but, again, way too interesting, so it became a portrait of a lonely dumpster, the image uncluttered by any other object.

William in the garden next to the Art Institute. A rare photo of him not hiding his face from the camera.

So it went, until Jamie lost interest in the city of Chicago’s various solutions for refuse containment, and decided William should become the star. He could be a statue, or walk like a pidgeon, or hold his head in such a way with his mouth open to pretend he was catching water spouting from a fountain.  Even better, be in pictures with street performers! All great ideas, unless you are dealing with the stubbornly camera shy, two hours late for lunch William.

Statue with no head.

Hiding from the juggler.

I had to abandon my preferred role as approving, indulgent grandmother for that of scowling, we-are-not-putting-up-with-behavior-like-this disciplinarian, as I tried to clutch the hand of a six year old intent on running from the relentless camera, and keep him from darting onto Michigan Avenue. Jamie was using my camera to produce all this mayhem, which was good in a way, since I then had two hands free to wrestle a squirming octopus.

The cost of war. Protesters in front of the Art Institute.

More protesting in front of the Art Institute.

Enjoying the fountains at Millennium Park.

We threaded our way past jugglers, war and tax protesters and children splashing in fountains at Millennium Park. Everyone was having a great time.  I would have a good time once I got William back to the hotel.

If Abe is fake, is he still Honest?

Then we lost Jamie  as he slipped into some kind of creative coma and disappeared into the crowd to shoot a seven foot giant wearing an Abraham Lincoln costume, and who knows what else.  Since he didn’t come back and he had my camera, I began to have my own breakdown.  William straightened right up, intuitively sensing that mine was the preemptive hissy  fit.

There are many twists and turns to the rest of the story, but let’s just say I liked it much better when it was perfectly boring.

I read this post to William and asked him how he liked it.  He says it’s boring.

A Man for All Seasons

Looking for worms and bugs

When Karsten comes to my house, he likes to look for worms and bugs in the garden, kick the soccer ball and draw reptiles on the stones with sidewalk chalk. His interests reveal such a well-rounded young man: scientific, athletic, artistic.  Plus, he’s sweet and handsome.

Kicking the soccer ball

Exploring for wildlife under rocks

Admiring his sidewalk chalk reptiles.

Wild, Wild West Family

Here is my family at the Tweetsie Railroad between Boone and Blowing Rock, NC.  Looks like they might be heading for San Francisco. Watch out, Blue Duck!

Note: I did not take this photo. The photographer’s © is on the photo, but it is illegible.

Sitting Pretty

How handy that my granddaughter sat up for the first time at my house, where I happened to have a camera ready to record this milestone!

Do you think I should sit up for the first time today?

If I just move this leg over a little......

I think I'm doing it!

Hey, do you see what I'm doing? I'm amazing myself!

Oops, lost my balance for a second.

Oh, I've got it now!

You are a wonderfully clever little girl!  Watch out world!

When I grow up

William graduated from kindergarten yesterday. He and his classmates looked so young, yet so grown up, in their cheery red caps and gowns.  They entertained us with an impressive musical presentation, then each child received his certificate, stepped to the microphone, and told us what he wanted to be when he grew up.  Among the dreams – a teacher, a gymnast, a football player, a doctor, a famous pianist, a zoo keeper, a veterinarian, a lawyer and a cabinet maker. When it was William’s turn, I was not surprised to hear him  say, “When I grow up, I want to be an artist.”

When I grow up.......

 

William and Miss Nancy

Today he will come to my house for a few hours, and he will want to work on an art project. He’s been making books lately, filled with drawings of alien characters and pictures printed from my computer.  We set a limit on how many he can print, not because I think it isn’t money well invested, but so he is aware that supplies and material cost money and it is not respectful of the planet to be wasteful.

If we talk about what he said at graduation, I will point out that he is already doing what he wants to do when he grows up.  I would love to hear his explanation of why he loves to make art, but I won’t push the conversation for fear of making him self-conscious about it.  I want making art  to be as natural as breathing to him.

 Today the scissors and colored pencils are out on his table and I have finished everything I need to do on the computer so he can click on the Poptropica bookmark on my menu bar, and get to work. When he grows up he can analyze why he wants to be an artist.