Lay down the drawbridge!

I never get picture order right when I upload photos, so the chronology is out of wack here....but the bottom picture shows Astrid's tooth in the hours before it fell out, and the top one shows her minutes after the tooth fell. Two interesting facts: her grown-up tooth had been sitting there, all ready to go, for at least a month, before the obstinate little baby tooth finally decided to go.

The other interesting fact, which says much more about Astrid's odd imagination than about anything else, is that she started referring to the baby tooth as "her drawbridge" in the last week or so. She liked pushing it down so that it touched her bottom lip, and then she'd imagine all the tiny horses and knights that could get into her "castle"--*if* she let them.

The last thing I should point out is that the mess on her face is chocolate, not blood. I just couldn't wait to get her post fall-out picture taken. It was just an excellent moment for the whole family.

Labor Day and Hurricane News

So Hurricane Gustav didn't hit New Orleans directly....that's good. Watching the news tonight, I heard several people say that New Orleans had "dodged a bullet." That's a metaphor I've always disliked, mostly because, here in Chicago, when one person dodges a bullet, it seems like someone else is right there to get hurt (or killed) in that person's place. So I was interested in hearing how the news folks talked about the areas that are feeling the worst of the storm. While I was thinking about this, Elliot and I came across a very relevant story from The Onion :


Hurricane Bound For Texas Slowed By Large Land Mass To The South

Elliot was tickled by this story because of his friendships with people from Mexico (his best friend, Atzin, is Latino, as are most of his teachers); he is appalled by how little most adults (never mind other kids) know about Mexican culture and geography. (I suppose I'm sometimes included there....) It's fun to watch or read The Onion with Elliot because he *really* gets satire, but I also sort of wish that he wasn't so completely familiar with the many wrongheaded and hurtful U.S. blind spots that provide them with their material.

Now onto a more pleasant subject: Labor Day. Labor Day is one of my favorite holidays--I do generally try to relax, because the day *after* Labor Day usually marks the beginning of my semester. Today I ended up doing yard work for about 90 minutes, so it wasn't all rest. Once evening rolled around and there was shade on our sidewalk, all four of us (plus Anaya, our eight-year-old nextdoor neighbor, and her mother) headed out to make our annual sidewalk chalk mural honoring workers. I'm too tired right now to post the pictures we took after we were done drawing--but I can say that, in the nine years we've been doing these murals, this one is one of our best. Some of the workers we depicted include a farmer, chef, street juggler, roofer, home health aide, botanist, and sales associate. (We did the sales associate because just as we were almost done with our drawings, a tired but cheerful woman came walking down our block. I told her what we were doing, and she said that she was just getting off her shift as a sales associate at American Girl Place. I told her we'd include her in the drawing--she probably thought I was nuts, but I kept my word. If she walks down our block on her way to work tomorrow, she'll see herself!)

Our Labor Day mural is one of our family's happiest (and simplest) traditions. More than taking them to a parade or barbecue (not that there's anything wrong with those--we went to a barbecue today), I think this tradition helps them understand what Labor Day is for, why it matters.

Old dreams, new dreamers

It's been 15 minutes since the end of Obama's acceptance speech in Denver, and I'm feeling a bit wrung out. It was a great speech--I wasn't worried about that--though I was anxious all day about how the event would go, especially given the huge venue.

As someone who grew up in Denver, I just *ached* to be there tonight. Looking at the nighttime sky over the stadium, I could almost feel the cool evening air (please, I don't want to be set straight about the air temperature and quality by anyone who was actually there....leave me to my dreams, OK?). I didn't cry until the last minute or so; then the floodgates opened.

Elliot sat between Terry and me as we watched the speech on PBS. He was popping his bubblegum and jiggling his legs around, trying to do origami and getting dirty looks from me every time he folded his paper too loudly. On the one hand, he distracted the heck out of me (imagine what it would have been like if Astrid was awake and among us!). On the other hand, having him there with us brought both Terry and me back to another very happy evening: the night we and a bunch of our grad school friends in New Jersey watched the 1992 election returns. As a family, we've gone through many wonderful changes since Bush/Cheney took over--especially, of course, the arrivals of Astrid and her cousins Lilly and Imogen--but there's been very little to cheer about, and so much to mourn, on the national and international scenes. So tonight we felt hope and optimism that we certainly haven't felt since late 2000--but we also feel tired and, with Elliot there to remind us of the years that have past, a lot older. (But probably not wiser--I feel very optimistic tonight!)

On a not entirely different note, Astrid realized last night that the war in Iraq is just about as old as she is (it started when she was about three weeks old). She's been pretty aware of the war since she was three, but she's really starting to ask questions now.

(Hey, I forgot to mention that she just completed DAY THREE of KINDERGARTEN. No wonder she's asking all these questions....)

Enough with the beach volleyball

We've been pretty excited at our house about the Olympics starting. Elliot, in particular, has been looking forward to them all summer. I always enjoy them, too---but I have to say that this time around, my anticipation has been mixed with equal parts dread of....

(Cue scary music)

WOMEN'S BEACH VOLLEYBALL

I'm willing to concede that volleyball played on sand is a qualitatively different sport from volleyball in a gym, and having two players on each team changes the dynamic--so it doesn't drive me nuts to see WBV televised during the Olympics. But when over-the-air evening coverage of the Olympics is so limited, do we have to have so much of the broadcast devoted to the sport of Teensy-Weensy Bikini Adjustment? Are the viewers of the U.S. as obsessed with this sport as NBC seems to think we are?

Sigh.

But don't think for a minute that we're going to let the parade of microscopic bikinis ruin our Olympics. Elliot and I spent much of yesterday cooking for our Opening Ceremonies Feast. The centerpiece of our feast was tofu eggrolls garnished with fresh mint and accompanied by a hot dipping sauce that Elliot made....wow, were they good. We made some less elegant treats, too: Jello Jigglers in the colors of the Olympic rings (except that we had trouble cutting the things into ring shapes, so they were pretty ragged-looking, but they were still refreshing), and Gingerbread Popcorn. Elliot and Astrid made pretty fruit kabobs out of Granny Smith apples and strawberries. I didn't get pictures of any of the supporting players in our feast, but I'm happy I got pictures of the egg rolls. Food really does make for happy memories.

Back to WBV for a moment (I know. I'm driving everyone in my house crazy with this. It's making me crazy). Because we don't have cable, we've been switching between NBC and Telemundo so that we can, well, avoid some of the WBV. But sometimes it's on Telemundo, too. The difference we've noticed (well, Elliot noticed it) is that the Spanish-language announcers come right out and comment on how the women look in their bikinis. The American announcers never say a word about the women's outfits or the constant wardrobe adjustments....which actually makes the whole thing weirder.