Kiki is a writer. I am a writer. We respect words; the imagry they lay down, the emotions they well up, the themes they jump around. Neither one of us dumb down our vocabulary with Fae, or change the way we talk. We’re pretty open with our words here.

So, Kiki and I were stoked about Fae’s first poem. She wrote it — well, dictated it — for a school assignment.

Theme in Pink

I slide over Pink Rainbows
I am called Unicorn.

I grow in spring while Fairies dance around
I am called Rose.

I play with children at the fair, shaped like stars and hearts
I am called Balloon.

~~~~~

Tomorrow, I’ll have her do something visually (paint, construction paper cut-outs, etc) to interpret her poem. Then, a following day, have her create a dance interpretation with thought-out and documented choreography.

We’re still in recovery mode from being sick, plus re-arranging the house.

So, of course, we decided the layout of the playroom/schoolroom/office sucked. And of course, we get a late start for projects that would normally take all day. It’s not that I’m complaining, which it probably sounds. It’s just the way it is — Bruce Hornsby notwithstanding. Letting go is not the easiest of egoless-ness reactions for me, so let’s just say I’m still learning. Moksha, I have not attained. Level 60 on World of Warcraft? That’s a different story.

I think we ended up with a good layout this time. Plenty of floor space for the kids to play, and the school area is niched off enough to make the presence of the playroom non-distracting. A lack of a good school area has been one of the biggest barriers to home-schooling Fae. The last iteration was so cramped, we spent most school time in the living room. A living room with too many shiny distractions for my raven daughter.

Fae is more interested in crumpled leaves, than in city art. Until a squirrel runs by...

The goal has been to get as many layout changes and cleaning projects done by this weekend, because, as I mentioned in this post, it’s the start of the busy season for us.

This weekend starts it off with a birthday party for Kiki’s best friend of 20 years. Nice dinner for the grownups, and two young uncles of one of the kids will babysit the group of five kids. It’ll be the first time we leave Yuki alone, and we’ve had a string of unnerving incidences the past month. Which means we’re a little gunshy about how well Yuki is taken care of in our absence. So I anticipate being on extra PDX Dad duty tomorrow night.

That’s ok, it’s what I get paid the big bucks for.

Here’s last week’s Portland excursion with Fae to the Tom McCall Waterfront. Look for this week’s pictures today or tomorrow.

National Geographic's "Sea Lion" docked at the Marina.

Soviet sub? Nah, just the USS Blueback (SS-581) at OMSI.

Sweet mother of pearl, what an exhausting past few days!

I apparently didn’t do a very good job of giving live updates (or any, for that matter) of the house re-arranging. We finally got up and running around 3:00 PM Saturday. After that was pretty much a blur, what with all the carrying back and forth to clear off the heavy furniture (we have a lot of stuff on top of other stuff). And with the “move this here, shift that there, move this to where that was, move something else to here, move that to where something else was, etc,” it was like watching real-life Tetris with Link’s life points.

And boyo, did I use those life points.

Does every guy go through this denial that they are no longer 22 years old?

I mean, I’m not old (I’m 34), and I’m not really out of shape. Still, I’m definitely not the spry 22 year old who could lift and carry each section of the gianormous teak hutch by myself. Or could shuck boxes of books for hours at a time. Or not fall asleep during dinner.

One of the downsides to fatherhood, for me, is that I feel my age more acutely. It’s nearly impossible to jump back to the lack of responsibility, the need to experiment, and the ability to pick up and go where I want that permeated my pre-fatherhood life. Now, it’s taking me over an hour just to write the post, because the kids rely on me to meet their needs. That unconditional love is an awesome feeling. Unfortunately, it doesn’t allow me to ignore my back pain as I’m reminded that I’m turning into “the old man”.

Nor does fatherhood allow me to sleep more than 3 hours at a time. And definitely no sleeping in to recharge the batteries.

I wouldn’t change it for the world, though.

Just wish fatherhood came with a lifetime supply of Naproxen.

Today is the Great Re-Arrange for the beginning of Fall.

And it’s going to be a doozy.

Seems like once a season, Kiki starts to get claustrophobic, and needs to re-arrange the entire house (or, at least, half the house). We don’t live in the lap of luxury, and so with two households worth of stuff — we never got rid of the flotsam when we combined households a couple years ago — it takes the spatial awareness and mathematical skills of Stephen Hawkings with the creative movement and flow of Mikhail Baryshnikov to get everything to fit.

This time, we’re switching the bedroom with the office, the playroom with the nursury, combining both girls sleeping arrangements into Fae’s room, moving the second couch to create a breakfast/nursing nook, and cleaning up the entry-way.

In other words, the entire house — other than the living room. We haven’t decided if we’re flipping that yet, to create space for a dining room.

The moving, disconnecting, reconnecting, stacking, huffing and puffing aren’t the difficult part. What the hell do we do with a five-year-old and a 3-month-old in the middle of all this? The entire house is going to be in flux, and it’s a typical Portland Fall Day (TM) outside.

Laurie Berkner will have to come to the rescue, I fear.

At least we’re not touching the bathroom!

Click below for updates…

2:20 — Planning is finished; including step-by-step list and house diagram. Just waiting for the baby to settle down and Kiki to finish lunch before we get started. With the way Yuki is fussing, it could be a while…

I think Yuki laughs at my lack of sleep.

No, really. Like, she guffaws and everything.

That’s the only reason why, that I can think, for her to constantly keep me awake until 2:00am, then get up at 5:00am for another feeding. When the house gets up generally at 6:00am.

At least I haven’t accidentally fed cat litter to Fae yet for breakfast.

Yuki -- Not sleeping.

Fae really picks up on literature, and languages. We just read a book to her once, and she’ll remember it pretty well for months between readings. It probably helped that we started her on chapter books around four years old. At night, we read a couple chapters (usually the Magic Treehouse series by Mary Pope Osborne, or the Disney Fairies collection). The next night, we ask Fae what happened the night before, and I think that’s been training her long-term memory pretty well, with regards to literature.

This attention to reading seems to make the current Language Arts curriculum so painstaking. K12 wants me to read a story to Fae (this week’s is the real version of Red Riding Hood, by the Brothers Grimm) each day over the course of 2-4 days. After each reading, there are some cut-out activities, definitions, and general questions. Ok, fine, I get the need to ensure her grasp of the reading material. But, three days for Red Riding Hood?

And in looking forward, the near future doesn’t look any better, as far as belaboring the story. So, I came up with a new method to combine all the discussion question topics into a single, easy, and fun game.

First, what you’ll need:

1. Get a spinner (like Twister) with different colors or numbers. The one I have is quartered by color.

2. Get enough tokens, coins, markers, whatever so that you have 3 of each section on the spinner. For example, I have 3 blue, 3 red, 3 yellow, and 3 green tokens.

3. Combine all the discussion questions from each of the lessons, then divide them by the different spinner sections. The three lessons covering Red Riding Hood had a total of 12 discussion questions, so I have three questions for each color.

4. Your child.

Reading Spinner Game - Child Not Included.

How to play:

1. Have your child spin the spinner to determine the color question.

2. If she gets the answer correct, she receives a colored token. If she doesn’t get the answer correct, then she receives nothing.

3. Continue until she gets three tokens of the same color. If she’s lucky, it’ll only be three questions from the same color. If she’s not, well, she may have to answer most of the questions on the sheet.

Some variations:

• Take a question from each lesson to make a colored question group. That way, like in Jeopardy, each subsequent question should be more difficult.
• Create 5-6 questions for each color, then require your child to acquire three tokens of each color.
• If your child get a wrong answer, go back to the section of the story/book and re-read it right then. Have her try to answer again. If she gets it right, she gets token.

Why I think this works:

First, it creates a visual game for a subject that’s auditory in the beginning. Sitting through reading a story, then sitting through a question and answer period can be challenging — especially for kinesthetic learners.  Second, it provides some randomness to the assignment. I think this would keep Fae more focused just because of the anticipation of the spinner. Third, and the most important reason for me, I think taking multiple days to cover one short story is gross overkill. Let’s trust that our children will retain what we teach, and not belabor the lesson plan to the point of total boredom and shut-down.

After all, if she doesn’t “win” the game, you can always revisit the story the next day.

Yuki seemed like she was getting sick again last night. Her first bout of sickness passed about a week ago, but she still had some head congestion. Mix that with her reflux and pre-teething, and we’ve had a very moist baby the past week.

At least she’s not the only one sick. The whole fam got hit pretty bad the last few days — me being the last. Damn, I thought taking care of two kids was challenging enough; try throwing in lethargy, sniffling that startles Yuki awake, and being too weak to hold a 14 lb baby for long stretches.

Luckily, it’s been a rather uneventful week so far at the PDX Dad household.

That’s to change rather quickly.

Northern Spotted Owl

October starts the mad, crazy time requiring group calendars and a flurry of e-mails confirming plans made months in advance. Apple tasting, apple cooking, pumpkin patch, birthdays, Halloween (woo!), pre-Thanksgiving get-togethers, Thanksgiving, post-Thanksgiving get-togethers, excursions into the Oregon wild to find that perfect holiday present (I’m thinking a Northern Spotted Owl would be cool), pre-Christmas get-togethers, stocking exchanges, Kiki’s holiday work party, Christmas, post-Christmas loot comparisons for the kids, then New Year’s.

Best part is that the schedule is so full and busy, there’s no time for Seasonal Affective Disorder.

For all the PDX-Area Parents…

Tomorrow, Friday 9/26, at the Pioneer Courhouse Square, the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board (NHAIHB) will celebrate American Indian Day by holding a powwow. This is from their announcement:

Portland, OR — The Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board (NPAIHB) and other local area American Indian organizations will be hosting an American Indian Day Celebration at the Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Portland on Friday, September 26, 2008.  The event will be a celebration of American Indian cultures and is intended to raise the level of awareness concerning the challenges that American Indian people continue to face in this country. The event is free and open to the public. The event will be held from 2:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. and will include Northwest Tribal leaders, Indian advocates, drum groups, dancers, and arts and crafts vendors who will share their talents and experiences with the Portland community.

Looks like it should be fun and informational, and there will be booths and a press conference for those of us who are politically active.

Fae and I took part of the school day today to explore downtown. We spent the morning on her Math unit assessment, and playing with her Phonics materials that just arrived today (only 3 weeks late). After, we set out for downtown to do our Science class on the “five senses.”

With camera in hand, and adventure in our hearts, we took to the streets of Portland. Our mission was to photojournal different things to represent the five senses. I created a scavenger hunt of sorts, a rather simple one. Fae seemed to enjoy herself, and was really into getting down and taking pictures.

All of the picture ideas are hers. Most of the actual holding of the camera was done by me, but the final composition of the pictures was Fae’s. Below the cut is the assignment, and the photos we took.

SIGHT: Find something that is…

• Blue
• Yellow
• Red

HEARING: Find something that makes a sound which is…

• Loud in volume
• Soft in volume
• Low in pitch
• High in pitch

SMELL: Find something that smells…

• Good
• Bad

TASTE: Find something that would taste…

• Good
• Bad
• We originally tried Sweet, Salty, Sour, Bitter, but found it just a bit difficult without going to restaurants, or hitting the lunch crowd at Pioneer Courthouse Square.

TOUCH: Find something that feels…

• Hard
• Soft
• Rough