Where's my van Gogh?

Not many 4-year-olds own a van Gogh, but my daughter Emily did. She held it carefully in one of her hands and fanned herself with it from time to time while searching upstairs, downstairs and in every hallway of the Cincinnati Art Museum. Emily was looking for a painting that matched her van Gogh postcard from the gift shop. Sometimes she would invite one of her friends to come along with us on the adventure. When we arrived, the girls would choose their favorite card from the back wall where the gift shop kept postcards of Cincinnati-owned art. Before purchasing, we’d ask the cashier to call to make sure neither of the works of art were in storage, before we spent the morning looking for them.

We stayed together, but I remained silent, allowing the girls to ask guards for directions and to make mistakes. After ending up in the same room 3 times, Emily FINALLY announced, “We’ve been in this room before! There’s that painting of the man in the black hat again! Let’s ask a guard for directions!” The girls eventually arrived at the proper room and seeing Emily’s van Gogh on the wall, shared a “touchdown-type moment,” hugging and dancing in tight little circles. I was pleased that the Emily and Paige were willing to take a few minutes to appreciate the skinny trees and van Gogh’s thick swirly paint, but having covered a lot of territory in their search, we soon headed to Graeter’s ice cream in Clifton for our traditional treat. A perfect end to a perfect morning.

Emily is twenty-one now and has wonderful memories of searching for her paintings. This summer we had a day off together and went to the museum to see our old friends hanging on the walls. As we passed the marble lion with his nose worn off, Emily remembered that he was Paige’s lion, guarding that same cavernous hall. And we saw Kayla’s favorite flower painting with numerous bugs still hidden within the petals. We visited Colleen's darling girls in the paneled room with their short haircuts and blue dresses. We hated to leave the old man in the black hat, but we were hungry and oddly enough, we both had a craving for Graeter’s mint chocolate chip.

Let it snow

I like to sing, but often don’t know even a third of the words in a song. Fortunately that doesn’t keep me from singing. I make up my own lyrics and will fill in here and there humming and doodle-de-dumming until I reach the chorus, which I can usually belt out with splendor. I’ve taught my daughter Emily every song I know (and don’t know) from camp songs, to show tunes, to 1940’s classics my parents crooned on long car trips across the country.  At Christmastime when the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful, we both rise in singing, “De-dum-de-de doodle-do, Let it snow; let it snow; let it snow.”

Sfathering

We all know what smothering looks like with too much attention and too much worry. I'm somewhat bothered that a word like smothering exists without its counterpart - sfathering. If a child can be smothered, couldn't a child also be sfathered?

Dads often are the ones who goad their children to climb higher in the tree, to ride faster on the bike, or to attend a college that's just east of East Jesus; sfathering can be just as annoying as smothering. Luckily, somehow our children find that safe and happy middle ground between our desires to smother them in protective bubble wrap and to sfather them to the roof of the car.

Nautical Gold - Trick to keep water from going up your nose when swimming

"Ann! Stop hanging on the wall!"

I hated swim team. My only moments of pleasure came at the end each lap, when I clung to the wall, tucking the curtains of my too-long-bangs back behind each ear. I tried to go unnoticed for as long as possible, catching up on my inhaling until finally the coach's whistle found me again, and I was off. Then came flip-turns and all joy in the sport was gone for me. Not only did I miss those regular intervals of oxygen and visual acuity, but now I had to contend with highly chlorinated water running through my sinuses at each and every somersaulty turn.

The solution to keep pool water out of my head came to me one glorious day when I saw the blurry end of the pool approaching and moaned a little. What do you know, bubbles came out my nose when I moaned!  With bubbles coming out, bubbles couldn't go in. I had discovered nautical gold. Humming soon replaced moaning as a more interesting way to keep a steady stream of bubbles flowing. And besides, there were countless tunes to hum to keep me company on the long and not so winding road of swimming.

When I was first married, I volunteered to teach swimming lessons at our local YMCA. I would get so annoyed when the other teachers instructed kids to blow bubbles with their mouths. Blowing bubbles actually MAKES water go up their noses. And that "up-your-nose feeling" makes it all the harder to get them to have another go at putting their faces in. I  started my beginning swimmers off by holding hands in a little circle in the shallow water. We'd pick a song we all knew like, Mary Had a Little Lamb. With our heads out of the water, we'd begin humming the song and then would gradually bend our knees until our humming heads were fully submerged. As long as the children hummed without stopping, there was a steady stream of air that kept water from going up their noses. It's an easy skill to practice in the tub too.

I still swim sometimes at the neighborhood pool in the summers. If you ever have the misfortune of swimming laps next to me, you might want to bring ear plugs.

Toast in Triangles - Starting Traditions

When I was little and lay on the couch recovering from a stomach bug, my mom would bring me a piece of toast cut into four perfect triangles. In my family, we always made our own breakfast, so having toast brought to you (in triangles no less) made me feel quite royal. I came to associate "triangle toast" with illness and with the extra-special-loving care one pours on loved ones during those times. 

Once I had a daughter of my own, I made sure that every time she was sick she got toast in triangles - another princess. One day when Emily was in second grade, I decided to send a little extra love in her lunchbox and made those thoughtful diagonal cuts to her ham and cheese. Emily came home from school declaring, 

     "Why did you cut my sandwich cut into triangles? I'm not sick. Let's save that for sick times."

Emily is 21 now and before going off to her senior year in college, she caught a cold. I buttered a piece of toast for her and listened as she snuffled from the couch, "Don't forget to do triangles!"

Traditions don't have to be elaborate, expensive or clever. An extra slice of the knife my mother made almost 50 years ago - and a crazy and beloved tradition was born. 

A great way to put in eye drops

Eye drops are a problem regardless of the age of your patient. The struggle to keep an eye open when a wet orb of water is about to collide with the eye's surface can be a challenge. I've found it's much easier to "do" eyedrops if the patient closes her eyes. While she lies down in comfort, simply squeeze one droplet onto that corner pocket of the eye on the nose side. Ask her to blink a few times, and it magically goes right in without all the trauma.

I even give myself eyedrops this way. It's harder of course, because you have to keep the tip clean and yet navigate blindly to where you think the corner pocket of your eye might be. Usually I miss the mark and then like one of those maze games with a rolling BB, I move my head around to steer the misguided droplet into my corner pocket where I can blink it into action.

Playing with Money

Once choking on change was no longer a hazard, we dumped a quart mason jar filled with quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies onto the carpet. My little one and I played in puddles of coins just like Donald Duck's nephews. We rolled in money, tossed it back and forth and made forts out of columns of pennies. Emily came to recognize the presidents' faces and differences in coin shapes the more she handled and sorted them. And honestly, who could ever tire of rolling in money? As Emily got older, we replaced the fake money for real money in our board games. Presto Chango and Monopoly are a lot more fun when you're counting up the real thing.

When Emily was four, we started an allowance system. Each Monday morning Emily received her age in one dollar bills stuffed neatly into the napkin holder on the kitchen table. She had until Saturday dinner to complete her four-year-old chores. The dollar bills served as "the nag" as they were forever falling out at each meal whenever we grabbed for a napkin. Emily had all week to empty bathroom garbage cans, to squirt down bathroom sinks and counters with vinegar  water and to wash the windows of the front door. If her chores hadn't been completed in time, the money disappeared and she had to do her chores after supper that night without receiving her allowance for the week. The next Monday morning though, four dollar bills would once again appear in the napkin holder as a reminder to complete her work sometime during the week. 

It was really hard as a parent to allow Emily to fail - sometimes several weeks in a row - but we let the napkin holder do its thing and eventually she got better at remembering. On weeks when Emily received her $4 for completing her chores, she distributed one dollar into each of four mason jars she'd decorated. One had an ice cream cone on it. (That was for impulse buying). One had a picture of something she was saving up for. Another had a red cross on it for whatever charity she wanted to give money to and the last one had a picture of a house drawn on it with the words "college" written under it. Every birthday another dollar was added to the napkin holder and another job was added to her list of chores. One dollar always went into each of the four mason jars, and as her allowance grew, Emily was allowed to divvy up the rest in whatever ways she saw fit. She sometimes asked us to break a one so she could have more control over how she divided the extra dollars in her allowance.

When the ice cream truck came down the street playing its signature tune of, "I had a little chicken and it wouldn't lay an egg" all the kids ran home as fast as they could to get money to buy popsicles and ice cream sandwiches. When Emily burst through the front door huffing and puffing she asked,

     "Mommy, can I have money for the ice cream truck?" 

     "Sure," I said. "You can use the money in your impulse buying jar or you can grab a free popsicle from our freezer and eat it outside with your friends."  

Sometimes Emily would buy the red, white and blue rocket popsicles from the ice cream truck and sometimes she'd go with the free grape juice popsicles in our home freezer. When her friends invited her to go to a movie one time, she couldn't go because her "impulse buying" jar was empty. Next to giving birth to her, this was the hardest thing I ever did. My husband and I allowed her to miss the movie. We comforted her and offered to watch a movie with her from our video collection at home. After that, I noticed that Emily started eating more popsicles out of the freezer and made sure she never completely drained her impulse jar. It felt good to see her making choices about how she was deciding to spend and save her money. 

Emily was also really proud of her work around the house. At four, it was her job to wash the narrow window panels on either side of the front door. Right after she'd completed her window washing one day and we were sitting down to dinner, the neighbor girl Paige rang the doorbell with her nose pressed impatiently against the glass. Emily melted a bit in her seat and tisk-tisked, 

     "Oh No! Not on my nice clean windows!" 

Each time Emily's college jar reached $50, I'd buy Exxon stock. Sitting on the porch swing in the garage with Exxon's Annual Report in her little lap, she checked up on her investment by looking carefully at all the pictures. She also enjoyed watching her money grow when I showed her the quarterly statements.

When Emily turned 14 the allowance ended, and she got a weekend job at the neighborhood bakery. We stopped using the mason jars and left it to her to manage her giving, spending and saving. But in those ten years of saving and 14 years of growth, Emily's college Exxon stock grew to $1,200. She's used this money to purchase college text books. With careful planning, renting books, sharing with friends and buying used and selling, she's managed to stretched her Exxon funds so they'll cover her for all four years. It's popsicles all over again.