Alice's Adventures Underground

Bopless

Posted on 7/18/2010 07:54:00 AM - by NG

In the past two months, The Caterpillar has gone from a diaper wearing, crib sleeping, pacifier needing baby to a potty trained big girl who sleeps in a bed. It's astounding, sometimes, how kids go along being kids and then suddenly make progress all at once. It's like I can see her growing. I'll go to work in the morning and come home to a kid with a whole different vocabulary at night.

Looking back over my archives, it looks like we she started potty training back in September. I'm pretty sure I ignored her efforts for about three months before she proved that she was really serious about it. Then there were successes and setbacks, with a solid regression after good progress that baffled and frustrated us all. But despite that, I'd say she was pretty solidly wearing "biggurl underwear" by the middle of May. So despite what seemed to me to be a lifetime, a long, arduous lifetime, I guess it really only took about five to eight months. That seems like nothing now. It is so weird how when you're a parent, the days drag by endlessly, yet the months fly.

The crib thing was pretty easy. She was highly motivated to sleep in her "biggurl bed." My problem was that I got greedy and I attached the biggurl bed thing as another reward for giving up the bop.

I've always hated pacifiers. I resisted them with a self-righteous vengeance at first. But when I was pregnant with The Dormouse, I was editing a book on premature infants and as I took in the text, I started to see that there are certain benefits to non-nutritive sucking too. This helped me to lighten my attitude about the pacifier somewhat. Still, when The Dormouse was an infant, I tried to avoid pacifiers as much as possible. Eventually, however, giving her a pacifier seemed to be a cue for her to go to sleep and in my own sleep deprived state, any cue that actually worked was a good cue. So we used a pacifier with her at night- or nap-time only.

I'd planned to get her off the pacifier before she was three. Then there was this one night when she was about two and a half when she wanted a green pacifier and we couldn't find the green pacifier and she threw a Gigantic Fit. And a little voice inside my head said, "This is a child who is old enough to not only point out the colors of the bops but communicate a bop color preference. I think maybe it's time to give up the bop."

At first The KoH tried the Supernanny's Paci-fairy trick: "There are other little babies who need bops. Can you give your bops to the other babies so they can have some?"

"BUT WHY CAN'T WE GO TO THE STORE AND GET THEM THEIR OWN BOPS?" she wailed.

So much for Supernanny.

In the end, I resorted to bribery. I told her that we'd make a chart and if she slept without a bop each night she could get a sticker on her chart. Then at the end of the week, if she had a sticker for every day, we could go to the toy store and buy something special. What special something would she like to get? That was all The Dormouse needed and seven short days after my first little seed of a thought, we had a chart full of stickers and were at the toy store picking out a "pink doll house" which ended up being not pink or a doll house, but whatever, we had accomplished this great thing and I was brilliant for thinking it up. That was the Thing with The Dormouse. You just told her to do something and she generally did it.

The Caterpillar is her own person.

Not only weren't the stickers and the prize enough motivation for her, but even getting to sleep in the biggurl bed almost wasn't enough either. Sure she went along with it the first night without complaint. But by the second night it was old hat and she wanted the bop more than she wanted a sticker or a toy or to sleep outside of the crib. We'd have a night or two of success and then go through a couple of nights where she'd prefer to go sleep in the crib again because the sexy allure of a pacifier was just too strong and she's much more an immediate gratification girl. Thanks, Daddy's Genes. I made her throw out the chart and start again each time that happened because our deal was seven consecutive nights.

It was quite a bit more painful than our experience with The Dormouse. Partially due to the fact that we started this whole endeavor over our July 4th excursion and there was that one night that we didn't have a bop in the car anymore and she chose to scream in the car The. Entire. Way. Home. after the fireworks rather than just fall asleep in the car with no external motivation like everyone else did.

But finally, thankfully, she did it.

(Please to ignore the fact that these are High School Musical character stickers. I told her that they were people who were jumping for joy because they were so proud of her for being a big girl and she went with it. Let's not crush her dreams, shall we?)

And it seems to have stuck. The Pink Princess Electronic Cash Register (Oy!) she picked out at the "play store" didn't hurt any either. We got rid of the crib last week, so there's no going back.

So now I have a diaperless, bopless, child who sleeps in a big girl bed. I should be thrilled, right? I don't have a baby anymore.

Why do I want to weep for her lost innocence?

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Cavelings

Posted on 7/17/2010 08:30:00 AM - by NG In: Camp Sweatshop

The one thing we did do on our misguided road trip, besides stop every ten minutes to pee, was a little spelunking. Oh, I know the preferred term these days is caving, but spelunking is so much more ridiculous a word to say. Spelunking. Speee-lunking. SpeeLUNKing. See? Caving just sounds normal by comparison.

Going through caves is kind of a long standing Thing between The KoH and I. The first time we went on a trip together, we stopped, just for the heck of it, at some tiny cave that was open to the public. Since there are a ton of caves in the Shenandoah/Blue Ridge area, where ever you go you see signs along the road for these random cave tours and now when we travel, we almost always stop at at least one. Every time I think we've been in them all, because we've really driven all around this area, I see one more that we've somehow missed. This time it was Grand Caverns in Grottoes, VA. Since everywhere else I tried to go rained us out that day, I decided if we were two hundred feet underground in a wet, dripping cave we'd be a little less likely to get soaked. And I was right. So I bought our tickets and decided to change the Camp Sweatshop subject of the day from Frontier Culture to Geology.

Word of the day: calcite.

As The Dormouse can now tell you, calcite is what makes all the formations sparkly in caves.

Second word of the day: iron oxide.

Iron oxide is what makes the formations rust colored. As The Caterpillar can tell you, when you run your sleeve across the cave formations they turn brown because of all the iron oxide on them.

The first thing they always drill into your head when you go into a protected cave is DO NOT TOUCH THE FORMATIONS. If you touch the formations, they will stop growing and it essentially kills them and all the other formations will rise up like the Sigourney Weaver's Alien to protect their young and life as we know it on this plane will cease. Or maybe it will just be bad in some other way. Either way, I'm always hyper-vigilant with the girls when we go in a cave and bark warnings at them if they even look like they're going to touch a formation. So when we started on our tour and The Caterpillar touched something with her sleeve, I yelled at her. And the tour guide said, "Oh, it's okay if she touches it with her sleeve; it's really about the oils in her hands that stop the formation growth."

"I know," I said, "but it easier to tell her not to touch anything than to get her to understand what needs to be on her hands when she does touch it."

I know the tour guide was trying to make me feel better. She was trying to be nice and accomodating. But that was exactly the wrong thing to say in front of a kid, because The Caterpillar heard her and interpreted it as "I can touch anything I want now." And in about five minutes she had extrapolated that to, "I don't have to listen to anything Momma says."

So I spent the rest of the tour grabbing rocks out of her hands, constraining her from jumping into pools of water, and keeping her from dragging her arms across civil war graffiti that managed to stay in the cave for one hundred and fifty years and was now about to be obliterated by a two year old with an attitude: "Mooom, she SAID, I touch it wif my SLEEVE!"

This entry was carved by a Captain in the Civil War for whom they managed to find records. He died in a battle a few months after being in this cave in 1864. Wild.

The most interesting thing about this cave was all the cave shields. Cave shields are a rare type of formation that basically look like a dinner plate sticking out from the cave wall. This cave, they told me, has more shields than any other cave in the United States. If I've seen them before in other caves, I've never noticed. But they are quite fascinating. I asked the tour guide how they are formed and she gave me their standard response:

One theory for the formation of these shields is that water is forced out of a crack in the cave wall. As the water is forced out of these cracks, the calcite crystallizes and a plate begins to grow. There are many other theories regarding the formation of shields.

But then she said that in this particular cave there are many shields that don't fit with that theory. They appear to be growing up from the side of the cave wall or where the direction of the water flow doesn't seem to encourage a circular plate. So for every theory she described, she showed me at least one shield that seems to disprove that theory. The Dormouse's theory was as good as any, "Maybe they needed a place to put their stuff. So they stuck a plate to the wall and then it just stayed there."

Mystery solved.

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And Somewhere...

Posted on 7/16/2010 08:01:00 PM - by NG In: I ♥ the Internet

Isaac Newton is in his grave, smiling.

(There are so many awesome photos here, I can hardly stand it.)

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But Little Mouse, You Are Not Alone

Posted on 7/16/2010 08:43:00 AM - by NG In: Camp Sweatshop

If it's not been readily apparent, I've kind of sucked at Camp Sweatshop this summer. I'm way too overloaded with work to plan anything when I don't have to entertain my children and then when they're home staring me in the face, I'm woefully unprepared. It was nice to take a few days off last week to go camping, but in order to do that, I had to work two weekend days and two holiday days just so I could take three days off later. I'm not so sure that makes taking a vacation worth it.

So for the last day of my ahem... "vacation," I took the kids on a road trip. We had to take The KnaveofHearts to the summer camp he's attending and The KingofHearts was in a training that couldn't be rescheduled. It was about a three and a half hour drive away, so I planned on bringing the shortlings, hitting a Waffle House because The Knave had never been to one before and wanted to see what all the fuss was about, dropping TheKnave off, then taking our time getting back. It'd be a girls' day trip. We'd see the countryside, stop and do some cool educational things along the way, like learn how people lived on the frontier, or pick our own fruit. It was a lovely image I had in my head of us all eating fresh peaches we'd just picked while driving along and pointing out cows and other animals and learning how to build a log cabin.

The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!

The reality was oh so different.

It rained like a mother dog almost the whole day. When we dropped off TheKnave, we had to walk to three separate buildings to register, check in, and settle him in the dorms and by the time that was done, we were all soaked from head to toe. The Dormouse looked like a wet noodle and The Caterpillar just kept walking around holding her arms away from the sides of her dress that was dripping puddles onto the floor. So when I went out to a discount store and waded through the three inches of water in the parking lot to purchase the sheets and towels that TheKnave had forgotten to pack, I also bought dry outfits for the girls. But by the time I got back to the dorm, the storm had gotten worse, so once I dressed them in the dry clothes, they lasted pretty much only as long as it took to walk out to the car once they were dressed. It was too wet and muddy to stop at any of the pick your own fruit farms we had seen on the way out. We did stop at the Frontier Culture Museum, that was my ace in the hole, but the gift shop people informed us that the entire contents of the museum were outside and didn't even encourage us to purchase tickets. "Oh no, you don't want to go out THERE!" As we drove back, the storm got even worse until I finally had to pull the car off the road because I couldn't see anything. But that was fine too because every ten minutes we had to stop SOMEwhere to find a bathroom for little girls who could not coordinate their bladder functions. So that bring us to a grand total of... oh... EVERY exit in the Commonwealth of Virgina that we've marked our territory at this week.

Pretty though.

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Camp Fire Girls

Posted on 7/15/2010 10:38:00 AM - by NG In: 13 Things

Thirteen Things I Love about Camping:

Getting up first thing in the morning and starting a fire
Cooking over an open flame
Sitting around the fire, throwing random things in to watch them burn
Sleeping under the stars
Roughing it
Coming up with creative ways to keep children busy when they're bored: "Hey, everyone, let's do a Nature Scavenger Hunt"
Bringing Elmo camping with us
Enjoying nature and not worrying about getting dirty or wearing clean clothes
Going to a place where there's no internet, phone calls, or email to answer
Home made ice cream
No television
Sharing the woods with raccoons
Learning about insects and other living creatures first hand

Thirteen Things I Hate about Camping:

Smelling like a campfire three days after you get home
Ingesting enough smoke to make a fire fighter wince
Screaming at children every six and a half seconds for getting too close to the fire
Getting up at 4:00 am and tripping over tent poles in the dark to put the rainslip on the tent because it started to rain
Walking back and forth to the bathroom from the campsite approximately three thousand, six hundred and seventy-two times with children who cannot coordinate the functions of their bladders and/or bowels
Huddling under a rain canopy and playing cards when it's too wet to do finish the scavenger hunt and they can't find "a nut"
Trying to clean Elmo off at the end of the camping trip when you know you should just throw him away but if you were to do that, Hell on Earth would be unleashed
Licking your finger, running across your children's foreheads, and leaving a clean spot
Going to a place where there's no internet, phone calls or email to answer and then watching four teenagers and adults spend all their evenings calling girlfriends and playing on FaceBook (Also: being jealous because I do not also have an iPhone)
S'mores
No television
Woodland creatures who come into the camp and steal your chocolate bars
Pulling ticks out of your kids' hair

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Meet My New Pet

Posted on 7/13/2010 06:03:00 PM - by NG

His name is Chompy.

He lives outside my office window.

I love him.

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O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Posted on 7/08/2010 07:04:00 AM - by NG

Random person talking to me: "Are you an only child, or do you have siblings?"

Me: "I have one brother."

Dormouse: "What?!?" *yells* "YOU NEVER TOLD ME YOU HAD A BROTHER!"

Me: "Well, what do you think Uncle Dan is, then?"

Dormouse: "Well, I DIDN'T know he was your BROTHER!" *huffs, walks away*

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A Harsh Mistress

Posted on 7/07/2010 06:19:00 AM - by NG In: Camp Sweatshop

Today in Camp Sweatshop: We learned about gravity.

I gave them both a lecture on gravity, what it is, what it does for us and why we need it. We also talked about the first person to theorize about gravity and how it works.

Here, I'll let The Dormouse explain it to you:

"Gravity is a gas that keeps you from floating off the Earth. It was discovered by a man named Lewis Norton. You can't see gravity but you can taste it. The moon doesn't have any gravity. That's why there are no plants or trees."

Heavy sigh.

It's a darn good thing I'm only responsible for their education during the Summer, isn't it?

Seriously, I gave them a short, age appropriate lesson on the basic (and scientifically correct, I might add) story about Isaac Newton and then not five minutes later when I ask her to repeat it to me THAT'S what I get? I might as well have had her read about it on the internet. No wonder teachers think their job is so hard.

Anyway, we then enjoyed testing the limits of gravity and the tensile strength of latex.

Until these awful boys came and used up all our balloons.

Why yes, I did check to see if the water restrictions had been lifted before embarking on this activity. Why would you think otherwise?

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Bowed

Posted on 7/06/2010 05:37:00 PM - by NG

Me: "Ahhh! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?"

Caterpillar: *matter-of-factly* "Putting bows on my legs. Duh."

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Bye George, We've Got It

Posted on 7/05/2010 10:33:00 PM - by NG In: Camp Sweatshop, DC

For Camp Sweatshop this week, we decided to teach the girls to... well... sweat. And sweat we did, because we took them to downtown D.C. for the Fourth of July where it was 97 degrees and sunny. Oh so sunny.

You might not assume this about me based on the pessimistic and cynical outlook I wear over my body like a blanket, but deep down I have a nationalist gene. I love my country and what it stands for and I get really, really excited about the Fourth of July. There's just something so wonderful about being in D.C. on Independence Day. I can't really describe it. I can't wait to take the kids to these historical places that I only read about in books when I was growing up and I almost always try to turn whatever the event we're at into some kind of educational opportunity that I'm sure they'll complain about when they're teenagers.

But you know what? I don't care. This is an awesome city and they can talk trash about me later, they're going to learn some history now. One day they can inflict the same kind of torture on their children.

One of my favorite things is to go downtown super early (if you get there before the birds come up, you can generally find a parking space and if you drive, you can bring things like lunch coolers and camp chairs and store them in your trunk until you need them) and sit on the steps of the national archives where they read the Declaration of Independence.

This was my view as we enjoyed the morning sun.

Not bad, huh?

The Dormouse's view was slightly different.

Perhaps we should have let her sleep in a little longer.

Thomas Jefferson was there to greet us. He asked what colony we were from, which confused The Dormouse, (apparently I need to have her attend a geography summer boot camp),

then he reprimanded us when the field band played our state anthem and we did not stand up. Note to self: find out what your state anthem is because this is the only state anthem I know - which is actually not a state anthem, but it should be.

The girls got to put their own signatures on a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence.

The Caterpillar needed a little bit of help.

The Continental Color Guard and Fife and Drum Corps played The Star Spangled Banner,

while this awesome ASL interpreter signed it.

I didn't get a picture of the baritone that sang it, but he pretty much didn't need a microphone. Never got his name and he's not listed on the website. Somebody's gonna be pissed. I also was inexplicably excited to see Maureen Bunyan as the emcee. The KoH and I argued about this but the Interweb confirms that she is indeed in her 60s. So if you believe the interweb, what that means is: she looks better at 60 than I ever did in my entire life. And that's kind of depressing.

Then came the reading, which was done by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, a Congressman from Missouri and some local charter school marketing director. If that doesn't prove that America is indeed a melting pot, I simply do not know what does.

Thomas Jefferson seems to have shaved a few years off his age from the first photo I took of him, doesn't he? Also: real hair.

Benjamin Franklin:

I'd have taken a photo of John Adams, but he was so short, I couldn't get anything but his bald spot. Poor John Adams. (He was actually the best of the readers.)

David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States, gave a speech about the history of the copy of the Declaration of Independence that resides at the Archives. He was interesting and surprisingly funny. He talked about the location of the copy over the years and he was even brave enough to admit to all the conspiracy theorists that the Declaration hasn't always remained at the Archives. There was that time in 2004 when treasure hunter, Nicolas Cage stole the copy right out from under their noses during a party. But he gave it back after reading the map on the back and now it's where it belongs and they will be twice as vigilant now to make sure this never happens again.

Ferriero also talked about the Tiny Declaration contest, in which people were challenged to tweet the Declaration of Independence in one hundred and forty characters or less. Some of my favorites:

Don't tax me, bro.

Dear George, it's not you. It's U.S.

England: You're not the boss of me.

Self-evdnt truths: All created = w/inalienable rts: Life, Lib, Prsuit of :-). Govt frm ppl. L8r King!

Bye George, we've got it.

All peeps are equal. Sick and tired of your tyrannical BS. Seeking independence. Your permission requested, not required.

The Archives also hosted the opportunity to don a three-corner hat and "air your grievances" this amused me to no end and I'm really disappointed we had to miss it. But we had to make our way to the parade.

But first we stopped to relieve ourselves at the fountain.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

We fast forwarded through the parade, meaning we started at the beginning and walked backwards toward the end of it. This is the only way to watch a parade as far as I'm concerned. You get to see most of the floats and stuff and if you get to the end before the last group has started marching, you also get to see some pretty funny people half dressed and/or looking completely out of sorts, like these Raising the Flag at Iwo Jima Reenactment Float who were just hanging around, leaning on the flag and talking on mobile phones.

The Navy was looking pretty snazzy.

But that's probably because Madeline came to join the fray.

Not really sure what these period bicyclists had to do with declaring our independence in 1776. I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't come around for another hundred years or so.

Finally, we made our way past the end of the parade and to the Capitol lawn, where we planned to stake out a shady spot, eat lunch and let the girls nap. But it turns out, it's been a few years since I've tried to do the Capitol Fourth concert, because at 11:00 am, we walked up to the Capitol to find security gates, which were closed... until 3:00 pm. The last time I went to this concert was before September 11, 2001, and there were not security checkpoints or closed grounds. You just could go find a spot on the lawn anytime you wanted and sleep there all afternoon. I feel like the terrorists have won.

So we did what any red blooded American would do: we got in line.

It was horribly hot and we kept slathering sunscreen on the girls. The people next to us had brought a sheet and fashioned a tent out of their spot in line to keep out of the sun. They shared some of their shade with The Dormouse and The Caterpillar so they could avoid looking like lobsters at the end of the day. And then they spent the next four hours being regaled by The Dormouse's stories, movie reviews, songs and television show updates.

Sometimes people are really nice.

And patient.

Oh so patient.

Once they finally opened the gates, we found a nice spot in the shade under the steps of the Capitol building,

and a mere five hours later, watched the sun set while listening to Gladys Knight (rocked the house), Darius Rucker (love me some Hootie), John Schneider (surprisingly good), David Archuleta (meh), Lang Lang (didn't know who he was before this but he played my favorite Rachmaninoff), and the National Symphony Orchestra (always a fan).

And then finished our celebration the way every good American should:

by blowing stuff up.

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Water Babies

Posted on 7/04/2010 06:12:00 AM - by NG

Last year I posted pictures at this fountain, highlighting the differences in personalities between my two ankle biters. I'm pleased to report that not much has changed in a year.