Georgia B.

Sent from my iPhone

Sent from my iPhone

In a bit of a rush, so I uploaded these as quicktime movies. If you can’t view them, let me know and I’ll embed them as flash video.

Wow, we haven’t blogged for a long time! We need to get this blog-train back on the rails and moving along again.

For now, just a quick note, however: Congratulations to Georgia, who made it through Goldfish and Penguin swim classes at the community center this summer, and has received official clearance from the community center powers-that-be to register for OTTER swim classes in Fall. If you see Georgia during what’s left of this summer and you happen to be near a body of water, be sure to have her show you how she can hold her breath underwater while you receite the ABCs. Not to be missed! We love you, Georgia!

For our part, we’ve upgraded WordPress and found a new template for the blog. I’ve made it possible for us to post pictures from our phones, which will make it easier to keep putting up new pictures of Georgie and I’ve done some blog clean-up. We’re both looking forward to posting more in the coming months, so don’t forget to check back every now and then.

Zach

Click on the word “cake,” below, to see Georgia discussing, well, cake.

CAKE.MOV

Great Grandma Green gave me a teacup to bring back for Georgia and Bobby. In addition to presenting Bobby, finally, with a proper vessel for tea, it has become the favored way for Georgia to have her last sip of water each night.

At school, Georgia has learned to identify letters by sound rather than by name. And at home we’ve tried to support this approach—although we taught her the alphabet, too, because we’re mainstream despite our dreams. Thus, when her teacher, Amy, told us last fall that George was on the cusp of reading, we knew that a crazy mix of technical skills, fluency, and comprehension were coming together, but we didn’t know how truly inspiring the process would be. Here’s a story Georgia wrote down at school the other day. See if you can tell where she’s going:

CATS UV ROX VIL SESHIN (cats of roxville station…this is the title of one of our chapter books)

WUS UUPN TOUM WOZ A CAT (once upon a time there was a cat)

END SH LIX TOO JUP END SHILOUS (and she liked to jump and she liked)

TOO PLEW (to play)

VISHO HOO BOL (something something ball)

END SH LIXS TOO LEP (and she likes to leap)

END CESH (and catch)

FROGS (frogs)

END END.

And here’s what she brought home today:

BOBBY STORE (Bobby’s story)
VUS U THAN DEYS (??)
U BNIE (a bunny)
E HOR NAM UZ (her name is)
BOBBY (Bobby)
ED SHE LILXE TOO PLAE (and she likes to play)
TOO PLAY TOPIS (to play something)
HORP TENT (her tent)
CEORIT (??)
END SHE (and she)
WUS U (was a)
RABIT (rabbit)

DE END END

Georgia and Grandpa

Here’s last year’s.

We stopped in Roseburg.

As you all no doubt already know, Aimee is the engine that drives our little blog about Georgia. She’s the one who brings it back to life after a long hiatus, and she’s the one who somehow musters up the energy to write a post after a long day at work followed by a long couple hours of parenting followed by a glass of wine at 7 and the inevitable temptation to slip quietly into doing nothing for the rest of the evening.

What Aimee does for the blog — resisting the desire to take it easy for an evening and getting just a little bit more done — she does for our home life, too. Come 7:30 PM, I’m ready to crack a beer, turn on Glee (ha!), and “work” on my computer for another hour or two before heading down to the basement for a couple late-night rounds of whatever video game I am (but shouldn’t be) playing. Those of you who know me also know, of course, how insufferable I can be when it comes to doing anything that could be prefaced by the words preventative, planned, or proactive (for instance: maintenance; or cleaning). Aimee’s the opposite. Unlike me, she chooses to keep the busywork of each and every day at bay by doing things in advance and coming up with plans. Without this impulse of her’s, gone would be the note on the island each morning telling me what 3-4 items I should place in Georgia’s lunch box that day. Gone would be the time to clean the house, time that’s been blocked out in advance so that it can actually get done. Gone would be regular things that inevitably require planning like teeth cleanings, haircuts, oil changes, and regular checkups with primary care physicians. We’d live a life without clean cloths, unless the clothes could be cleaned the morning of the day for which they were required. We’d no longer have closets and drawers with over-sized clothes and shoes for Georgia, waiting for her to one day grow into them. We wouldn’t have a lice treatment kit in our cellar, at the ready for when she enters public school. We wouldn’t have extra boxes of purely-o’s in the pantry, which would mean that some mornings Georgia would not be able to cover the floor of our car with cereal on her way to school.

In sum, our family’s collective lives would be much messier, much crazier, and much less successful. For all the grief I give her for it, and despite my undying devotion to the by-the-seat-of-my-pants lifestlye that I so adamantly espouse, I recognize (publicly, even!) that my daily experience would be disastrous if not for the work that Aimee does.

All this to say this: Aimee was in Chicago for three days. Don’t get me wrong though — Georgia and I did fine. I’ve known the benefits of the, shall we say, more structured life, for some time now, and have learned how to be a functional parent in her absence. This isn’t a post about how GB and I fell apart while she was gone, trashed the house, and watched TV for three days straight. The point of the post is offer up a picture of some play that Georgia and I engaged in while her mama was out of town. In her absence, we played and played and played. We played a lot. Specifically, we played Star Wars a lot, and I managed to snap some pictures of some of it, which I thought I’d share.

As Georgia and I played, I thought about how this narrative has formed in our family about how Aimee is good at “making the trains run” (I believe that’s how Mitchell put it), and how I’m good at playing and teaching. It’s not really a fair distinction, and I’m not convinced it’s true. What I didn’t want to do, in any case, was post another narrative of father/daughter play without also talking about how any leisure time that GB and I find is all made possible by the hard work that Aimee does with and around Georgia day in and day out.

So, here’s to you, Aimee – thank you for keeping this blog going for almost five years — and thank you for everything you do to make the awesome time that Georgia and I had together on Saturday possible!

Enough talk – click on the thumbnail below to start. Be sure to click the next button to go to the next page, and apologies in advance for the spelling errors!