little learner

Since we moved here, June has taken part in several sessions of the “Little Learners” program at the rec center. One session focused on the Olympics, another session focused on farming, and the current session is focused on the Arctic Circle. Yesterday’s Little Learner adventure even made the newspaper. If you look closely, you can see June in the photos (green jacket with pink trim)…

Summit Daily Article

You Are My Sunshine

two days of halloween

Enjoying hot chocolate on Sunday at the Pumpkin Fest in Silverthorne…

an angel…

surveying the field for a good pumpkin…

enjoying hot chocolate and protecting our gourds…

some practice trick or treating on Sunday at the outlet stores…

Halloween night. Gwen the Polar Bear?…

Jolee the Ladybug and June the Eagle (costume by Louise)…

preparing for a stomach ache with a bowl of Nerds…

good ol’ plastic vampire teeth…

happy halloween

sweet pickle

Gwendolyn Irene arrived at 8:12 am on Thursday. She weighed 7 pounds, 7 ounces and measured 20 inches from head to toe. Here are a few pictures from her first 36 hours. We’ll post a more detailed birth story with more pictures when we get a chance.

about three hours old…

Adrienne just hours after delivering Gwen. This picture alone should tell how well she did and how she was feeling. Beautiful…

Big sister Jolee holding Gwen for the first time…

taking care of their little sister…

my three googlebeans…

Adrienne’s mom, Louise, getting acquainted with her new granddaughter…

Our family tradition: each girl has worn the same outfit and ridden in the same car seat on their way home from the hospital. June is on the left, Jolee is in the middle, and Gwen is on the right…

Gwen out for a walk in the fresh air for the first time…

And finally, the celebratory Schlitz tradition. Again, June’s birth on the left, Jolee’s in the middle, and Gwen’s on the right…

don’t fence her in

Our sweet little Junie turned five on Friday. Wow, five. We celebrated in fine style. I think she’ll have fond memories of this birthday for a long time to come.

In the morning, Adrienne made pancakes before we drove to Nathrop, Colorado for a horseback riding adventure. Adrienne stayed at the stables with Jolee for pony riding and cat wrangling while I went with June on an hour-and-a-half trail ride. Adrienne and I speculated that June’s head might explode from the excitement. June loves horses, but she’s never been on one for more than a few minutes, and certainly not out on the trails. Near the end of our ride, our wrangler, Rick, said to June, “You’ve been smiling since you first laid eyes on Jazz (her horse) and you haven’t stopped smiling since.” It worked out better than we had even hoped. The weather was crisp and beautiful, and the birthday girl was in heaven.

After the ride, the girls chased the cats for awhile longer, we enjoyed a quick lunch in Buena Vista, and then we enjoyed the beautiful drive back to Breckenridge.

In the late afternoon, Mike, Jenny, Emmett, and Owen came over to continue the celebration. June, Emmett, and Jolee always get wound up together, so when you throw a birthday party into the mix, they spin like tops. I think June was utterly exhausted by night’s end. For dinner we enjoyed the cheeseburgers and corn-on-the-cob that June requested, and for dessert, Adrienne created an amazing “snail terrarium” (see the pictures below).

Junie and Rovers on birthday morning, trying to be patient for our trip…

Jolee taking it easy on the drive…

June and Jolee would likely have been satisfied just playing with the kittens at the stables…

Jolee on her pony, Mighty Mouse…

not a bad view…

we are lucky, to be sure…

the stream crossings were June’s favorite part of the ride…

some deer along the way…

heading back to the stables…

back to the cat wrangling…

the snails…

genius. the terrarium scene was completely edible except for the glue attaching the eyes to the angel hair pasta…

Emmett, Owen, and Mike enjoying the festivities…

a fitting end to the day. Junie clearly satisfied to get the horse she drooled over in the toy store a few months ago…

Happy Birthday, Junie. We love you.

a book and some videos

Just finished reading the excellent new book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney. I’d put it on my “well worth reading” list.

And now for a few videos to brighten up the start of your week. I came across this video a few nights ago and it quickly had me in tears (happy tears, that is). It’s footage of a 29-year-old woman hearing her own voice for the first time thanks to Cochlear implants…

Continuing with the same theme, I came across this video a few months ago of an 8-month-old having his Cochlear implants turned on…

The girls love this one…

And finally, another one to make you smile…

brooke’s take

Brooke just posted her impressions from Wasatch. It should further reinforce how generous she and Mike were for pacing me.

Jolee’s First Birthday

While I managed to post pictures of Jolee’s first birthday at our house in a timely manner, these few pictures from her birthday celebration in Michigan slipped through the cracks. It was a really fun celebration with family and friends. Here they are, only a-year-and-a-half late…

June helping out her little sister…

And this was the masterpiece produced by the artist at the local Kroger’s bakery counter. Beautiful and to the point…

book report

While talking with Brooke in Utah, I kept recommending books I’ve recently read. I realized I should post a book review of sorts. Perhaps you'll find a book or two that piques your interest. Most of these books are parenting, marketing (specifically to girls), or child development related, but I've thrown in a few books at the end covering other topics as well. I don't believe any single parenting technique provides a silver bullet. For me, I read the parenting books mainly to learn new approaches that might be helpful in various situations. I read the marketing books because I find advertising schemes aimed directly at young children very troubling, and I find the entire “every little girl needs to be a princess” Disney marketing machine and culture utterly repulsive.

I found many of these books via The Simple Dollar blog. The author is a voracious reader and provides regular book reviews, with which I rarely disagree.

I’ll provide some commentary for a few of these books. For others, I’ll just provide a link.

Top Choices

Mindset by Carol Dweck - Despite what I've just said, if a book alone could make a big difference for a child, or an adult for that matter (this book is not specifically aimed at kids), I believe it would be this one . This book was published in 2006, and I can say with near certainty that if this book and its accompanying research existed during my formative years and I had been able to implement some of its ideas, I would have been a much, much better athlete and student. I'll leave it at that. Fantastic book.

Nurture Shock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman - Turns much of the conventional wisdom of child development on its ear. Each chapter covers a different topic. Well researched, well written. Coincidentally, one chapter addresses Carol Dweck's mindset research.

The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease – The benefits and importance of reading aloud to our kids is covered in the first half of the book. I learned that a child’s listening vocabulary develops much more quickly than their speaking vocabulary, so you can start reading more challenging books to your kids than you might otherwise think possible. It prompted me to start reading chapter books to June awhile ago, and she responded positively right from the start. The second half of the book is a huge “Treasury” of recommended read-aloud books. Before reading this book, I would just stare blankly at the overwhelming selection of children’s books at the library and eventually pick something randomly. Armed with the “Treasury,” I save tremendous amounts of time at the library, and we’re almost always pleased with our choices.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein – I’ve ready several good books on this subject. If you read just one, this is it.

Well Worth Reading

It Takes a Parent: How the Culture of Pushover Parenting Is Hurting Our Kids—and What to Do About It by Betsy Hart

I Just Want My Kids To Be Happy! Why You Shouldn’t Say It, Why You Shouldn’t Think It, What You Should Embrace Instead by Aaron Cooper and Eric Keitel

Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers’ Schemes by Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown

Born To Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture by Juliet Schor

Parenting with Love and Logic by Foster Cline

Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds by Susan Gregory Thomas – Focuses on younger children (infants and toddlers) than most marketing-to-kids related books. Interesting analysis on what differentiates Gen-X parents from Baby Boomer parents.

Girls Will Be Girls: Raising Confident and Courageous Daughters by Joann Deak

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

Not So Great

Bringing Up Geeks: How to Protect Your Kid’s Childhood in a Grow-Up-Too-Fast World by Marybeth Hicks – I wanted to like it, but its arguments relied too heavily on a single family’s anecdotes.

Great Books On Other Topics

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand – My father-in-law recently recommended and lent me this book, and it easily makes my Top 10 all-time list. The only downside about this book is that it might give you a guilt complex the next time you complain about anything.

Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan – I read it awhile ago but I’ve included it since I enjoyed it so much. Incredibly well written and done so without an apparent agenda. It leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions.

All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi – I also read this years ago, but it’s the simplest, least-focused-on-minutia, and most effective personal money management system I’ve found. It might require some tweaking depending on your situation, but the basic concepts should work for everyone. If you’re not aligned politically with Elizabeth Warren, don’t worry, as I remember it there is no political component to this book.

best on earth

Yesterday while hiking with the kids, Adrienne proclaimed, “There can’t be a prettier place anywhere else on earth at this moment.” Agreed.

up we go…

mine ruins…