Present perfect

For some reason, we got into a discussion at the dinner table about the verb "to eat" and its various permutations.

"I eat," I dictated. "I am eating. I ate. I have eaten. I had eaten."

I was finished (having, I now realize, forgotten the future tenses). But there was one more. Suddenly, from Ella:

"I am being eaten."

Milestones

I was saying on my Facebook status this morning that it somehow seems to me that the five milestones of child development are:

1) Is potty-trained.
2) Hops in the car with no extra gear re...quired, fastens own seat belt.
3) Can be sent to play "outside somewhere."
4) Enjoys two hours of violin and piano music without fidgeting.
5) Gets job and supports self.


Obviously, I was kind of kidding about #5, but #4 is a real milestone that I don't think everyone can achieve. Given that I love concerts, I'm fortunate to have had kids with the constitutions to be able to achieve it, and pretty early to boot. I know there are stories of musicians whose kids have been attending concerts since Day One and know how to behave at them and will just sit there and listen with rapt attention at the age of three, but I've always been pretty skeptical about these as well as jealous. I figure age 8 and 10 are about the right age for mine.

Last night, we were at a concert featuring a solo pianist playing Debussy and Tschaikovsky, a solo violinist playing something by an early-20th-century composer named Eugene Ysaye--who was fortunately an admirer of Beethoven rather than Stravinsky, so it was easy on the ears, and a quartet playing Mendelssohn.

It was, I think, the first concert where I could focus more on the music than on how the children were doing. We've done a lot of classical music stuff in the past year, mostly because of Madison's involvement with the Bach Children's Chorus. (At least one of them (Messiah) got so late that Audience Member Ella needed to go home at intermission.) But I can't think of anything that we went to just as a family to go hear some classical music. David and I have seen other performances on our own in the last 12 months, but I guess we've just figured we'd have a better time without them, not to mention the needless expense of buying tickets for bored kids. So last night was kind of a first.

When I see live music performed, I get very involved in the music. I usually focus on the cellists, given that I play cello (sort of). But I'm not great at focusing on more than one thing at a time, so I'm sure that part of the reason we haven't brought the kids to these things before is that I didn't want the distraction of having to focus on them at the same time as the music.

I said it was the first concert where I could focus MOSTLY on the music, I didn't say entirely. At least 40% of my attention, especially during the second half, was focused on making sure that Ella could lean against me comfortably as her energy started to ebb...after all, normally she'd be asleep at that time. I *really* didn't want her to squirm or fidget, because that makes for a bad experience for those sitting behind us. And I *really* wanted her experience of the concert to be positive, because then it makes the next one that much easier. So, I confess, enough of my brain was focused on the kids' experience that I couldn't really enjoy the Mendelssohn.

It's easy enough to say, "Get a grip, Deb, relax and don't worry about the kids, or how they behave, they're fine, they'll squirm a bit, it doesn't matter. Don't let it detract from your own enjoyment of the music." Sorry. I know this is the right way to do it, but I just. can't. do. it. I figure it's better to face that up front.

Next time it will be easier for me, I'm sure. And eventually they'll enjoy it so much that I can ignore them entirely. I hope.

The pianist soloist was a 12-year-old prodigy who is at Juilliard. Madison was equally impressed with his playing and with the fact that he started taking college classes when he was 5. 5! Her eyes were round. Age 5! She couldn't get over it.

--------------------------------

In other classical-music news, Ella has decided to join the Bach Children's Chorus. Madison joined when she was 8, but I just didn't think Ella was ready for it. You see, you have to have a passion for this kind of thing in order to carry yourself through the discipline and rigor of all of the practicing. Madison has always had it. She loves a challenge. She rises to the occasion. Ella just tends to go with the flow and enjoy life. She sang with the BCC on their trip to DC this past May, mostly because they needed more people and the repertoire was limited and she could do it. But I didn't push her to join, and she kept saying she'd probably do it next year when she's 9. I didn't mind at all, because the last thing I need for our home schooling day is to add in something else to make the kid do. I definitely didn't want to deal with whining, and have to shell out some bucks for the privilege, to boot.

But then, on Thursday morning, Ella surprised us all by saying she wanted to join. She wanted to go to Chorus Camp with Madison that day. She knew what she was getting into, she said, and she was ready.

Well, okay! Go for it, girl.

The director is going to make her go through the whole audition process in the next couple of weeks before official rehearsals start. Okay, I see the point, but now I have to get the child prepared for the audition. Readers of this blog will remember that I actually broke out in hives helping Madison get ready for that audition 2 years ago. That won't happen this time, though, because the director is going to accept Ella...Ella can sing and the chorus needs the extra bodies and the money...and she won't want to alienate me, either, even though I'm no longer president of the board of directors. So it will be a bit much to whip the child into shape on the Bach and Handel pieces she needs to know, but we'll do it.

And, I have to say, Ella was great, yesterday. She kept requesting over and over in the car to hear the piece she doesn't know, and was practicing and practicing. She's in tune great...she may be a natural soprano where Madison and I are altos, she hits the high A effortlessly...but she's a kind of whisper-singer, I can't hear her that well. I figure I'll let the director deal with volume, and just focus on getting her to know the stuff inside and out.

So, Ella is taking something really seriously, possibly for the first time. I don't think she'll even need a lecture about how once she starts this she needs to finish it, she can't weasel out in the middle or whine about it. She really knows that already, I think. I hope I'm right.

-----------------------------------


And now for something entirely different...

We're going on a Bat Hike tonight! One of the girls' favorite naturalists is leading one. I tried to get in at the nature center on Wednesday, but the guy told me that it was closed, they were all full. But Liz is letting us in, telling us that "there is always room for the Ross family." I feel so honored.

Hurray for freedom of the press

It's still legal here in the U.S. My friend Reena posted this:

http://llph.typepad.com/life_liberty_the_pursuit_/2009/08/equality-for-all.html

Utterly American.

I may have taught her too much

Madison and Ella are playing with Ella's Littlest Pet Shop set.

They decided to have the little animals do a play, choreographed and everything.

Madison started making up a song that the mice should sing to introduce themselves.

I proposed that they just use the "Square Dancing Mice" song from SteveSongs. They like that song, and it seemed to be perfect for the purpose.

"Mom, Mom, we considered that," said Madison. "But there was a copyright dispute."

I had the perfect face for radio this morning

Yesterday, the media group that owns several radio stations in town asked me to become a regular on Friday mornings, on two of their most popular stations...starting TODAY.

Of course, I said yes. I like being on the radio. The exposure is priceless. And it went very, very well; I hadn't expected it, but for one of the stations (WARM 101.3), I basically blended in to become just part of the gang on the radio for an hour or so, from 7:40-8:40. I'm so happy that I now get to do this every week! And they even gave me my own parking spot in the garage...B-80. Whoa.

I will confess to a bordering-on-irrational love of successful P.R.

Oh, and speaking of successful P.R., here is a link to yesterday's News 10 NBC spot on KidsOutAndAbout.com. MSNBC even picked it up! It's been quite a week.

"Required"

We got an unofficial-looking white folded-over-and-taped printout today from our local school district's office, from a heretofore-unknown-to-me "Census" department.

Dear Resident:

For planning and reporting purposes, it is required

Oh-ho! Required, is it? By what? By whom?

that the District know about all children in our district from birth to age 18 and if the child receives special education, from birth to 21.

If there are no changes it is NOT necessary to return this form.

Now, there's know about, and KNOW about. What does it all mean? There is no reference to what, by law, they need to know.

What they do "know" on the form is this: The girls' names, birthdates, gender, ethnicity, grade in 2009-2010, and the school they attend. (Interestingly, the school that is listed for them is:

Private School (Home Schooled)

I kinda like that wording.

But here's the catch: They got their birthdays wrong. That's right, some careless clerk made a typo on each girls' birthday (though they got the birth YEAR right for each).

The question is: Do I notice this? And, if I do notice it, am I actually legally obligated at this time to try to correct for the District's typo on this document? (It's clearly a typo...they got the same, incorrect, birthday.) I have to say, from a security perspective, I'm not too interested in documents winging around through the district with all of my girls' identifying info on it. Might be kinda nice just to leave the birth date wrong. The girls' quarterly reports and IHIPs have their correct birthdays on them, so I figure I'm probably covered legally, as I tell them the correct birthdays six times each year.

If there is a child living in your home that [sic] you suspect has a handicapping condition [sic] and has not been previously identified by the school for this condition, please check this box.

Fat chance.

Questions? Call the Census Department at____

Seriously considering asking them to show me the law.

Who says you can't go home?

I've been traveling with the girls for the past week, that's why I haven't blogged for a while. It was a hectic trip, but also the kind of trip where every night I looked around and thought how nice it was to be there, wherever "there" was that evening.

I brought the girls out to New Jersey first for a few days of fun with the sane branch of my family, then dropped them off at my friend Tatiana's in PA while I went up to visit/take care of my friend Anne who lives in New York's Hudson Valley and is about to have Baby #4.

During the course of the trip, I did a lot of criss-cross driving through New Jersey, the state of my birth and upbringing. I left NJ about 15 years ago, and since then have mostly felt aversion at the idea of going back, even for visits or for business. Rochester has been home in a way that NJ never was, never could be. I felt that the state had ground me down, not least because it is obscenely expensive to live in, the people as a whole are not particularly friendly or welcoming, and you spend much of what could be productive time sitting in traffic that sucks the life out of you. And though working in New York City for 4 years in my early 20s was a great experience, it too was intimidating. It was never *my* city. Leaving was the right thing to do.

But this week, there I was, age 40, driving through the Garden State by myself with the radio on.

Today's radio stations play LOTS of 80s music, and the New York City area is no exception. It was the music as much as the setting that plunged me right back into a vivid experience of what it was like to be Adolescent Deb. I heard Bon Jovi on the radio, and I remembered *exactly* what it was like to be 14, how I felt about the adults and kids I knew, what my take on the world was like then. The struggle to figure out what was the right thing to do, without guidance. The struggle to try to get through life and school without dissolving.

As I've said before on this blog, I was very different sort of person then. But now, I have an adult's understanding of what it all meant. And I'm old enough now that while I was absorbed in these memories this past week, I found that, remarkably, I could be both people simultaneously.

When I was a teenager and trying to figure everything out, I used to imagine myself older--35!--and life-toughened, going back in time to advise and comfort Teenage Deb. "What would I do if I were really, really wise? I used to ask myself. "I'll KNOW how to manage this in 20 years, but maybe I can just IMAGINE it now." I tried to be both people simultaneously then, too, but I was limited to what a 15-year-old could know.

Of course, as principled adults do, I've dissected my childhood for 20 years to determine what was right about it and what was wrong, and to decide what I'd replicate with my own kids and what I'd replace. But when I was in NJ this week, I suddenly felt that I could understand this in living color, not just theoretically. The experience brought back details that I'd forgotten, especially nice details that I'd suppressed in an attempt to put it all behind me. I understood, viscerally, the absolute necessity to a healthy later emotional life of not subjecting kids to too many things they have to endure; otherwise, ALL of the memories are clouded, even the good ones. In other words, "Well, at least it builds character" is pretty much bullshit.

This time, driving through New Jersey and New York City, it hit me that I was looking at it all with fresh eyes. In the intervening years, without realizing it, I'd somehow conquered New Jersey and New York. Really. It wasn't just that I drove into the city, which I'd done lots of times before when I was working there, but that I was doing it almost on a whim, to get a hair cut, and managing the traffic, tolls, and parking rates--not to mention what it costs for a Lexington Avenue trim--without blinking. The Big Apple had become No Big Deal.

When I was 23, I'd looked at that magnificent skyline from my bathroom window in Weehawken somewhat wistfully. The City meant hopes, dreams, possibilities, mystery. It was also edgy, and tough, and scary, and somehow inaccessible even though I was there every day. But this past Tuesday, as I was rounding the curve into the Lincoln Tunnel, I saw it differently. I felt sad, as I always do, seeing the gap where the Twin Towers should be. But I also saw the skyline prosaically. It was a place where I'd lived, and worked, and developed, and succeeded, and left. The 15 years from age 10 through age 25, without fanfare, clicked into a new place for me. New Jersey is now much more simply the place where I made the best of a bad situation than the scene of a tragic movie.

And how about those Bon Jovi songs that set these thoughts in motion? It was a "Two-Fer Tuesday" block of Bon Jovi: First, "Livin' on a Prayer" from 1986, and then "Who Says You Can't Go Home?" from 2005.

Almost poetic.

Something else you can get if you ask

Ella has dance camp on Tuesday mornings this summer. Somehow, it became a ritual to take her to the nearby McDonald's afterward on the way home. Not a healthful ritual, obviously. But a pleasurable one.

Two weeks ago, Ella got a Happy Meal with a Teeny Beany Baby. A sheep. You get the little stuffed animal, and then you can go online and create a persona for it, earn points during games so you can buy it things, etc. She was entranced with this sheep. She made a terrific online pink bedroom room with a bunk bed for Fluffy at Ty.com.

Well, last week, after dance camp, she wanted to try for another Teeny Beany Baby. She wanted a sheep to go with Fluffy. So she asked, "Do you just have to take what McDonald's gives you?" I said we could go inside and ask them rather than go through drive-through.

So we got up to the front counter, and I asked the young woman taking our order, "Um, is there any choice of Teeny Beany Babies, by any chance?"

"Well..." she said, rummaging through her supply of bags. "I got the skunk, I got two Grimaces, I got a Ronald, I got the sheep..."

"The SHEEP!" Ella and I both exclaimed excitedly at the same time. The young lady jumped a foot in the air and started laughing. Madison, of course, was embarrassed.

I felt, well, rather sheepish.

But Ella, Fluffy, and Puffy are very happy together.

You never know what you can get if you ask.

What you get if you ask

I was a very shy, geeky, introverted kid. Yes, really. People look skeptical when I tell them this, but it's true. I was never taught about how to BE around people; no one ever verbalized skills such as: "Stand up straight, look someone in the eye, and smile as you shake their hand confidently." I tended to fold in on myself. But I changed all that very deliberately when I was about 18, and grew into a style that I'm comfortable with.

One thing I never knew as a kid, because I was never taught to talk to people, is what you can get if you just ask. Or, more precisely, what you can get if you cheerfully offer "value for value." It's an aspect of the beauty of capitalism, only without cash.

Now, I'm not talking about asking for handouts, for people to be generous with me out of the kindness of their heart because I need something that they have. No, I'm really talking about how it's important to connect with people who have something I can use, and that their giving it to me actually benefits them.

Of course, to get stuff, you have to give stuff.

In my case, what I can offer is visibility and great public relations through my web site. This week, my project was to get hotels and attractions to give me free packages to give away to KidsOutAndAbout.com readers as part of a big campaign I'm doing to get more subscribers to my Thursday morning e-newsletter. So far, in just three days of casual work on this, I have FIVE great packages donated for overnight vacations to various places within driving distance of Rochester. All I had to do was connect with managers personally, explain easily what I can give them (lots of visibility to exactly the market they're looking to attract) and ask for them to donate. And they did, with pleasure.

Similarly, going on the radio gives my web site a lot of exposure whenever I do it. So I asked my main radio personality contact, Marti Casper of 93.3, if she'd like me on next week. (I get visibility, they get a cheerful, articulate, I-love-Rochester guest.) Not only did she say yes, but she told me that one of their sister stations was asking her to let me know the next time I'm on, so THEY could have me on too.
(Update: The media group that owns both radio stations has just asked if I would consider being on every Friday!)

The point (and why this is a really good lesson to teach to kids) is: None of this would happen if I didn't ASK, and ask again, all the while happily and in a non-pushy way offering something I know is valuable. Even though folks like the radio station know I exist and like having me on, they rarely initiate having me on, it's usually me telling them I'm available if they want me.

So what I want my kids to take away from this: The idea that "if you build it they will come" is pretty much a pie-in-the-sky platitude. Build it, absolutely. Make it great. And then promote it like heck, but make sure not to be a pain in someone else's neck while you do it. It's a delicate balance.

It's important to keep both parts of this concept in mind for Everyday Activism, too: To be successful at changing the world, you need to build something whose value is attractive to others, and you need to promote it happily and cheerfully rather than defensively or bitterly.

Silvia is probably a better homeschooling mom than I am

Silvia, a nice hs-ing mom I met when we lived in Charlottesville for a year-and-a-half a few years ago, is far more hip than I. She and her kids are raising scorpions.

I always say I'd go to the ends of the earth and back for my kids, but this is something I would never, ever do. Just, no.

No in an "I-can't-vaguely-imagine-doing-this-even-though-it's-so-darned-cool-in-theory" kind of way. No in a "despite-all-of-the-valuable-experience-I'm-robbing-my-kids-of" kind of way.

I console myself with the idea that it's good to know one's limits.

Sorry, girls.

Three more agents to reject me before I try again

Three agents I met at the conference in late May still have my manuscript. As of today, they have had it for eight weeks.

Eight.

Yes.

Apparently, this is par for the course in publishing. I almost prefer the prompt rejections. Publishing etiquette doesn't permit me even a teeny-weeny hey-I'm-still-out-here-and-you-have-my-manuscript-maybe-it-got-lost? email to the agent for another four weeks! It's like that part of life is on hold. A manuscript held hostage.

I'm going to get old waiting for this to get published.

No matter, I'm slammed this summer anyway, what with real clients requesting real work (that THEY want to see back to them WELL before eight DAYS has elapsed, thank you very much, none of this eight-week nonsense), and with the slam-one-technological-door-open-another-and-run-right-through-it quality that this summer has had as I work to expand KidsOutAndAbout.com outside of New York. So I haven't had that much time to write...

except I've done my best. I've even started another book. A snappier book. A hipper book. One that is less 1950's and more 2000's (to quote from one of my stack of Frontier Team rejections). One that could actually win awards. One whose topic will be actually controversial, even--probably--with my writing buddy.

But no worries, Frontier Team fans (all four of you!), I'm still working on Book Two. Max is gonna solve that mystery, yes he is. I just have to work out the details. And, you know, finish writing the thing. In my copious spare time. As my own personal comedy duo sings "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" in the background.

(Hey, come to think of it, maybe that's not a bad whodunnit topic...)

The bodies of the mangled mourning doves litter the baseball diamond. Eager Little Leaguers arrive for practice, gloves in hand, but flee in tears at the carnage before them. Turkey vultures circle overhead, hoping for an opportunity to dart in and seize a corpse for an afternoon snack. The parents eye the scavengers warily as they herd their permanently scarred players back into the minivans. Is it a job for The Frontier Team?

No, no, it most definitely is not. I don't even write that way, for pity's sake.

I think I'd better go to bed.

The DS2

Madison and Ella have started a singing/dancing troupe which they are calling the "DS2" which stands for Dancing-Singing-2.

For the last three days, they have been rehearsing for about 45 minutes to an hours (seriously!) choreographing fun and funny routines to songs they know. We get a new routine each night. They dress in black and white, or all white, or all black, and wear black top hats.

The first day, the routine was to Tom Lehrer's "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park." Then Cole Porter's "They All Laughed." And last night they chose "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."

They call themselves "Hope (Ella) and Joy (Madison), the D...S...2!" They are remarkably like Penn and Teller; Ella is silent (except when she's singing) and Madison does all the talking. And they even physically resemble Penn & Teller, what with Madison being much bigger and wearing glasses. (After we realized this, we showed them a Penn & Teller YouTube, a clean one: their appearance on The View in Las Vegas a few years ago. It will be so much fun when they're ready to see "Bullshit!" but it's just a bit too foul-mouthed right now.)

They both sing well, actually. And Ella dances well. As for Madison...well, at times Madison's klutziness is almost aggressive. But it works pretty well for the comedy effect.

The Ross Family "Nows"

Ella has been doing a lot of writing this summer; she writes in her journal nightly and continues to make lists of things. She loves "having a restaurant" for dinner -- she finds out what we're having, names the restaurant (last night it was "Verdura" -- Spanish for vegetables, because it happened to have no meat), and makes up a menu. Then she writes down everyone's order and delivers it in the kitchen to me, then brings out each person's dish and pours the wine.

Yesterday, Ella decided that she was going to produce a family newspaper. She interviewed each of us, and today we received the first edition of the "Ross Family Nows." She had actually intended to write "Ross Family News," but made a typo and decided that "Nows" was cuter, presumably because it implies an up-to-the-minute reporting style. It has a typical about-to-be-third-grader's unabashed phonetic spelling, too, sporting words such as "wrcing" and "spashlt" (specialty) and "math matishuon." Graphics feature prominently in the Word document, which she typed out and printed all herself.

Anvil legal question from Madison

Madison has been very interested in discussing legal questions lately, scoping out what aspects of life the law governs and what it doesn't.

This was just heard at the dinner table:

"So if Max and Henry were over at our house, and they were juggling anvils up in my bedroom...and one of the anvils crashed through the floor and came through the kitchen ceiling and fell onto the table..."

"Yes...?"

"Well, what would happen?"

New verse to Jingle Bells

Last night, several hours after Madison had gone to sleep, she appeared in the office where David and I were working. She looked awfully awake, but she wasn’t really awake.

“I think I’ve really accomplished a lot,” she mumbled, as I steered her toward the bathroom.

“What?” I asked.

“I’ve made a new verse,” she said. “To…” her forehead wrinkled. “I can’t think. Snowbells? No. That’s not right. To Jingle Bells.”

I figured she’d been dreaming about writing new verses to Jingle Bells. Okay, whatever. I was amused, but I didn’t ask her more because I wanted her to go back to sleep.

This morning, I asked her if she remembered what she said to me. “I think I told you about writing the alternate verse to Jingle Bells,” she said.

“Right! You were dreaming about writing verses to Jingle Bells?”

“No, I was doing it before I went to sleep. Here it is!” and she recited to me:

I was just adding yeast
To our great big Christmas feast
But when the very first guests arrived,
The cooking quickly ceased.
First came Auntie Pat
And then our Uncle Lou
And then our cousin Dan arrived
With his big sister Sue.

“Did you write that down?” I asked.

“Nope, I just remembered it,” she said. “I made up another half verse, but I kind of lost it.”

“Well, I’m going to write it down,” I said. “That’s going in the Book of Madison.”

Flute lessons

Madison started flute lessons Wednesday, at the Hochstein School of Music and Dance. She loves her teacher, and so do I. She says she wants to practice 21 times per week. I'm happy she's glad to practice, but I sure hope the 21 times is an exaggeration, especially this week, as her sole assignment is just to practice toodling so that she consistently gets a TOOT sound instead of a PWOOF sound. She had definitely improved by the end of yesterday.

I hope that being more conscious of her lips will help her with this mouth thing she's been doing lately. (Maybe she's been doing it all her life and I just only recently noticed. But I'm pretty sure not.) She's sucking her lower lip into her mouth and holding it there with her teeth, especially when she's concentrating on something else. Her lower lip and the area below it is getting chapped, which is a feat in the summertime. She looks like a beaver, and this is nudging up to 30%-40% of the times I look at her. Thirty seconds after I tell her to stop (all I have to do is stare at her and do the Beaver Look myself, and she releases her lip...she sees it really does look ridiculous), she's at it again as soon as her focus is elsewhere. It drives me a little nuts, because it looks so goofy, especially with those braces-are-in-my-future crooked front teeth.

So maybe the flute will help.

Rejection! But a "positive" one

From Random House:

I finally got a chance to sit down with The Frontier Team this weekend and really enjoyed the chapters you sent—the Jameses in particular! Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I just didn’t fall in love with the project, which is something I require from everything I acquire, and I’m going to have to pass on this one.

Best of luck finding the right home for this! Just keep sending it out and I’m sure you will.

Definitely the most encouraging rejection I've received yet.

Wyoming scenes I'd like to paint

I just may paint some of these. I am itching to paint. (On the other hand, I came back from my trip with a new sense of purpose about some projects, and I'm going to make headway on them before I give myself the luxury of painting time.)

Old Faithful with buffalo magically trotting in front of it at just the moment of eruption:


Thermals at Yellowstone:


A cool thermal up close:


South of Jackson, WY:

On the road into Jackson, WY:


The sun through the trees, early morning in Jackson, WY:


The Madison River in Yellowstone:


Looking at the Tetons:


Waterfall on Pine Creek Trail in southern Montana:

The best vacation ever

The trip out to Yellowstone was busy, fun- and friend-filled, and just about perfect. The girls recorded everything in their journals, I have 600 photos, and I'll be coming out with a series of articles about the trip with recommendations and everything. We had, miracle of miracles, no travel problems, and even the fact that the first and last days were filled with driving long distances didn't phase the kids. (Thank Zeus for DVD players.)

I have been trying to organize the photos and select a few representative ones from each section. These are some photos with me in them (I was the cameraman for 95% of the photos we took, though).






I am not in this one (hope that's obvious):

That's Ella holding Serena, Madison holding Tatiana (not to be confused with the real-life Tatiana who is with me in the picture above). The girls got the bears at Yellowstone. You might think it would be a bad idea to procure large stuffed animals on a big out-west driving trip. I did, too. But in this case, we were both wrong. Those girls love those bears beyond any other souvenir they've ever gotten.

Off! Happy Fourth of July!

We are off to the great wilds of the Rocky Mountains and Yellowstone -- if you could call "wilds" flying to Denver and meandering up to Wyoming and Montana and staying in some nice inns and seeing all of the Yellowstone attractions and the hyper-history that is Cody, WY. (There, e.g., we are staying in an inn run by the great-granddaughter of Buffalo Bill Cody.)

I took the time to set up my email and all the programs I'd need on Ella's mini laptop yesterday, which means I don't also have to lug around this "big" old laptop. Most of the places we're staying are extremely civilized, with free wifi, so I may well be in touch.

The girls are still going gangbusters on their journals, and seem to regard them as The Most Important Thing Not to Forget. Yay!