PeterAndRobyn.com

24February2010

I drive a Vanagon

Posted by admin under: Family Blog.

I’m digging this tune by Orange Crush, “The Vanagon Song“:

11February2010

Winter’s growth: Montessori and Little Miss Chatterbox

Posted by Peter under: Family Blog.

Maria Montessori We wrote a few months ago about our challenge deciding what kind of preschool experience would be appropriate for Lila, then two years old and just emerging from her “terrible” phase. To be completely fair to her, we’ve heard real horror stories of difficult toddlers, and with Lila we feel she was really just pushing boundaries, stretching into new dimensions of her ability to interact with us and get what she wanted. We adapted our parenting numerous times to each new phase, and by the fall we realized that she was really growing into the just the kind of inquisitive and sensitive little girl who would benefit from a Montessori preschool experience. Her day care at the time was very focused on free play, and while we know she truly enjoyed playing princess dress-up day in and day out, she was ready for more directed skill building, higher levels of negotiated interaction with peers, and more structure. We’re so lucky that Chico’s Montessori House preschool is just a quick bike ride across Bidwell Park from our house, and Lila’s name came up on the waiting list with perfect timing for her to start a few days before her third birthday in early January.

The transition from day care to preschool for Lila came fairly easily, notwithstanding the separation challenge each morning for the first few weeks. But, as we’ve heard before, once Mom and Dad are out of sight, Lila forgets all about us and begins to engage with her surroundings just fine. Initially always shy, she soon makes friends and is the unstoppable ball of energy that we know her to be in a comfortable setting. While the artwork being sent home lacks that in-home daycare polish, the intellectual take aways for Lila have been obvious to us. She’s become even more polite and well-spoken. She’s a better leader and negotiator with her little sister, and her attention span for self-directed play, ‘reading’ and other activities is much expanded. I can’t even remember the last time she asked to watch a Sesame Street DVD (we have the 1970’s episodes, reserved for a special treat as the only TV she can watch).

Now, Little Miss Chatterbox – that’d be our hilarious little Simone. At sixteen months, Simone is a very confident child. Her vocabulary is impressive, literally hundreds of words, and just this evening as I put her to sleep, she snuggled on her stomach, reached around to point at her back, and demanded “massage”. She gets excited about going to “Papa’s house”, talks constantly about her “Yiya” (that’s Lila) and actually requests to play certain applications on my iPhone, such as the Bubbles popping game. She can and will climb to get anyplace she desires, wrestles lovingly with our tolerant cat Calliope, and eats as if it’s going out of style. As her chef, I’ll take that as a compliment. One aspect of Simone’s approach of toddlerhood which has delighted me to no end is that she now sleeps in her crib, and not in our bed. With this development came the end of breastfeeding, but I think that we were all ready to have our own spaces, body parts and nights to ourselves again. Simone doesn’t always sleep through the night, but she is better at it than her sister was at the same age especially when we realize that Lila continued to take middle-of-the-night bottles far past the point that it was advantageous to anybody. Simone tanks up before bed and she’s good till morning – hooray!

Beyond the children’s developments, which are for us the most significant things happening in life, we’re also cementing our travel plans for this year. We’ll be at my brother’s wedding in Louisiana this May, camping and music festivals with the Vanagon this summer, a trip to the Oregon coast with Robyn’s family this August, and I’m hoping there will be a Big Sur coast trip in there somewhere.

I’ve been getting a lot of use out of the Innerspace music studio which was mentioned back a year and a half ago when it was being built. There are a group of electronic music producers in town who gather regularly at my studio so we can exchange ideas, techniques, share our work, support the local breweries, etc. I did a lot of quality sleeping on the studio’s couch when Simone was still c0-sleeping but since then I find myself getting more actual music work done in the studio – except for a night when I choose to blog instead. Such as tonight. And as it approaches the midnight hour, I’m going to sign off with this and thank you for bothering to read.

26November2009

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by Peter under: Family Blog; Photos.

Hope you’re chillaxing with your deer family like we are in Sebastopol.
A doe chilling next to me on Thanksgiving Day, 2009

22November2009

Previewing Preschools

Posted by robyn under: Family Blog.

I’ve been desperately trying to figure out a preschool situation for Lila for when she turns 3. Now that she’s pottytrained and she’s 2 and 3/4 years old, she’s eligible to start preschool. But although there are a lot of good preschools in town, they all have waiting lists. My first choice is to get her into the Montessori preschool that is just on the other side of Bidwell Park from our house. It sounds like they have an opening that we could get her into. The trouble is that school doesn’t start until 8:30 and ends at 4pm. Now how on earth is a working parent supposed to make that work if I’m supposed to be at work from 8am – 5pm? I need a program that can take my kid from 7:30am – 5:30pm at a minimum! So in addition to trying to get into the school, we need to work out a drop-off and pick-up arrangement and pay someone to handle that. There is another daycare down the street from the school and that might work except that means that the preschool costs $540/month and the before/after school care costs another $295. That’s a lot of money!! But I’m so eager for her to start some kind of school program because I think she really craves learning. Her daycare is just “free play” all day and I’m not very happy about the quantity of sweets and TV she’s being exposed to. I think she would really benefit from some school-type activities so I’m eager to make that happen starting in January.

8November2009

Kids say the darndest things!

Posted by robyn under: Family Blog.

This morning Lila said “We have hair on our heads but not our out bodies. But Snuffy and Daddy and Calli have lots of hair.”

Simone very clearly says “sit down” and points emphatically towards the chair when she wants me to nurse her. It sounds more like “dit down” but there is no question about what she is saying. She’s so very demanding! Simone says “ball” and “duck”, “apple” and “ba-ba”. From this point on, her vocabulary will just continue to expand every day.

Simone also says “Lila” but it sounds like “I-ya”. Lila sleeps in a lot these days so often I’ll tell Simone to go wake her sister up. Simone goes toddling into Lila’s room saying “I-ya… I-ya…” and then climbs up onto Lila’s little toddler bed. Lila sleeps in after her naps too. In fact, there are lots of times when Lila just likes to curl up and stay in bed. Sometimes I worry about her a little bit and why she might be so lethargic. But I guess she gets it from her dad.

8September2009

Sleepwalking

Posted by robyn under: Family Blog.

Last night I think I must have done some sleep walking. It must have been after I got Simone from her crib and after nursing her back to sleep in my bed. I woke up around 3 in the morning and found myself on the couch. But I had no idea how I’d gotten there. Best I can figure out is that I must have gotten up in the middle of the night, possibly to go pee (though I don’t remember getting up to go pee) and then tried to go back to bed but ended up lying down on the couch. None of it really makes any sense but all I know is that at some point in the middle of the night I left Simone sleeping in my bed by herself and somehow ended up sleeping on the couch naked. Thankfully Simone didn’t fall out of the bed!
Actually here’s another good story… Two nights ago, I woke up around 6 in the morning and heard Simone crying out from the other room. My first thought was “that’s odd that Simone’s in the other room… is she in her crib? why isn’t she in the bed with me?…” So I got out of bed and went to get her. Turns out she was in the living room, crawling towards the kitchen! Peter was in the bonus room sleeping on the futon. Lila was still in bed. Simone was crawling around the house all by herself while everyone else slept! Until she got lonely and cried out, I had been dead asleep in my bed. I can’t believe I didn’t hear her wake up or notice her crawling off the bed or anything. She just helped herself off the bed (which Peter has taught her to do recently) and crawled on out the door!

6September2009

Yes, We Have Two Kids And Are Too Busy to Blog About It

Posted by admin under: Family Blog.

I have spent more time updating the software for my blog to keep it secure against internet-based threats than I have actually writing anything this summer, but I would like to make some honorable mentions of family milestones:

* We built a deck (okay, had it built. It’s rad)
* Simone took her first steps.
* We sold the Brave Little Toaster (71 VW bus) and bought a 1989 VW Vanagon Wolfsburg edition. Sweet!
* Peter is furloughed due to budget cuts, while Robyn is not, thankfully.
* Lila is hilarious and has entered the “why” phase.
* Our dear friend Ashley passed away suddenly and we’re hoping to be a present in the life of her beautiful baby boy and her surviving partner who has about the toughest job I can imagine right now.

If you didn’t know about some of these things, you’re probably not on Facebook. We’re on Facebook and it sucks away small silvers of available time that wouldn’t really work well for blogging anyway. So come find us.

Theoretically there’ll be more verbose posts ahead and the subjects above, but I can’t promise much, life’s too busy!

11April2009