On Wednesdays, a friend drives Ben to school and Eli gets a little extra play time at home. This morning, he decided to rebuild the chair-train that he and Ben used to make all the time; it’s been so long, he’d forgotten about this arrangement, and was clearly delighted with his own creativity. The blue plastic coal tender is a new feature, but then he needed coal. “Mama, what would be appropriate coal?”

I paused, a bit surprised by his fancy new word, and then handed him a ball.

He pounded it between his hands once or twice, and then put it in the “tender,” deeming it appropriate. I handed him another ball. Same response. I found another ball; into the coal tender it went.

Then we ran out of living room toys so I went to scout the play kitchen. “Would this make appropriate coal?” I asked, really unsure of his requirements, as I handed him some plastic scoops of ice cream. He regarded them carefully. “No. They are NOT appropriate.” “How about these?” I suggested, offering up the cupcakes that his godmother Libby made him. “Yes! These are appropriate!” He ran them into the living room one by one, shouting happily, “These are ap-pro-pri-ate! These are ap-pro-pri-ate!” The vacuum-sealed bag of coffee beans: appropriate (shiny and black, it’s arguably the most appropriate, despite its shape). The empty box of Hershey’s cocoa powder: not appropriate.

We had time for one ride — Eli, his little blue bear, and me — to the zoo, and then it was time to leave for school, where I expect he was able to continue his train play in some other appropriate way.

A blog post — with lots of pictures! — about eating out with the boys in France, over at the Learning to Eat blog. Check it out!

Ben’s never been a particularly terrific sleeper. He didn’t really sleep through the night until he was three, when we threw so many changes at him at once (new house! big boy bed! toilet training! baby brother! preschool!) that, clearly exhausted by all the upheaval, he finally started sleeping through. And for a time, his sleeping was pretty good, although I couldn’t really appreciate it (on account of the new baby), but I had my wits sufficiently about me to note it in my journal: “We’ve never had such a run of great sleep. If only I could sleep so well!”

Since then the sleep has come, and it has gone, and right now it is gone. He doesn’t fall to sleep easily, he doesn’t stay asleep. Occasionally we have tried charts and rewards for staying in bed all night, and have had varying degrees of success, but I think he just might not ever be the kind of person who sleeps from night to day without being awake in the middle of the night for a while. And I don’t stress about that too much because he gets it from me, after all (and a middle of the night cuddle from a warm kid isn’t so bad).

But the hopping out of bed every ten minutes for 2 hours after I’ve said goodnight drives me wild. I am not at my best mom self after much of that. So, inspired by Aliki‘s post the other about the other part of the sleep issue, we are taking steps.

Ben is beset by worries and bad dreams; most recently he has worried about being a passenger on the Titanic, or about falling off his bike during the Tour de France. So we’ve been talking a lot about worried thoughts and happy thoughts, and trying to switch from one to the other (again, who am I to parent him through this?!) And he likes to make lists, so we decided that a list by his bed, of good dreams, might be useful fodder for him to refer to when he is anxious. I suggested the first thing on the list, and then he got into the spirit of it and really started to dream big.

I think his prize for staying in bed will be making pain au chocolat.

The first time we’d tried to visit the Eiffel Tower, we traveled via the batobus, which offers a scenic ride down the Seine.

Too scenic, as it turned out.

We arrived at 7pm and faced lines that snaked from the entrance back and forth all the way across the plaza. We were without sufficient food or line distractions to survive the wait, so we risked – and faced – the boys’ loud and bitter disappointment by turning back and regrouping.

The next day was stormy and windy and Eli didn’t nap. We debated: on the one hand, the weather might be keeping the crowds down; maybe a tired boy would be a docile and patient line stander…. But probably not, on both counts. We stayed home and cooked dinner.

Finally, we planned our ascent of the Eiffel Tower like mountaineers plan for Everest. In this case, Tony and I were the Tibetan sherpas, and the boys were Sandy Hill Pittman, who show up and have every desire met, needing only to put their bodies where they’re told and not use up too much oxygen. I was grateful they didn’t want cappuccino (although come to think of it, at the base of the Eiffel Tower, that would be easy to provide).

We’d been advised that the lines are shorter in the late afternoon, so we waited until after Eli’s nap, hoping that the boys would be well-rested, the lines a little easier, and that we’d get up to the top and out before it was way too late for dinner (or even bed). We brought Eli’s view master and discs, Ben’s journal, 2 cameras (since Ben’s a big photographer now), and windbreakers in case it was cold at the top. More importantly, I spent Eli’s naptime packing up food:

carrot sticks, water bottles, baby bell cheeses, 2 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, 2 nutella sandwiches (never underestimate the motivating power of chocolate), 2 Z bars, and a ziploc bag of almonds and raisins. We set off at 4, arriving at the base at 5pm. Tony grabbed a bench with the boys while I staked out our place on line.

We didn’t make it out without any tears (from Eli, when I started walking down a flight of stairs holding his hand rather than letting him hold the banister):

But, we made it up, we made it down, and we made it back home, our backpacks empty, four and a half hours later.

cross-posted at Learning to Eat

There were many things we loved about our two weeks in France. I got to meet my long-time computer friend, Susannah, and her family; Ben got to practice his newly-acquired French (which was charming except when he was frustrated with us, and would shout a begrudging “D’accord!”); we all got to eat lots of ice cream and crepes and nutella and pain au chocolat.

But perhaps our favorite thing about France was the carousels. It seemed like every park, every plaza, practically every wide spot in the road had a carousel plunked down in it, and the boys rode them all. They learned to distinguish between up-and-down horses and rearing-back horses; they learned to look for leather belts that weren’t too worn down to buckle (because those rearing-back horses reared waaaay back!); they learned that sometimes it’s pleasant to ride the carousel on a bench swing, or a stationary, climb inside (rather than climb aboard) animal, or even a bench.

In Paris, we found carousels outside Sacre Coeur and in the Tuileries, and in the Jardin du Luxembourg. The one near Sacre Coeur was double-decker, the first we encountered (though we went on to see them in Montpelier and Avignon, too):

The carousel in the Jardin du Luxembourg doesn’t look like much; it’s not as sparkly bright and bejeweled as the others. It’s a single decker, rather small and delicate, there’s no music, and the animals, who are all sorely in need of a fresh coat of paint, don’t move up and down, or rear back, they just sway genty back and forth.

But none of that matters, because here, after the carousel operator checks each rider’s buckle and gently pats each animal’s head, he hands each child a short wooden stick, and as they spin round and round, picking up speed as they go, they get to try to catch a brass ring on the end of their stick.

The kids love it, and the parents all cheer their kids on — suddenly carousel-riding became an exciting spectator sport, and we all had a ball.

Mama, PhD is just starting to make its way out in the world, and yet my attention is split between that and my new book project, Learning to Eat, which I’m co-editing with Mama, PhD contributor Lisa Harper.

As the book proposal makes the rounds, we’re blogging about feeding our kids. Right now, our summer travels have us writing about learning to eat in Hawaii, in Paris, and on airplanes, but eventually, we’ll get back to where it all started: the kitchen, the playground, the dinner table.

Come join the conversation!

It was good to get home yesterday, after a long and emotional day (two airplane rides, Evan Kamida’s beautiful memorial service, and one big earthquake), to find that all my guys had remembered Tony’s and my anniversary.

Perhaps it doesn’t make sense to get anniversary cards from one’s children, but they just like to celebrate. Perhaps, even more, it doesn’t make sense to get a card in the shape of a famously sunken ship, but the boys just like boats right now (if you’re having trouble telling the two boats apart, just remember that the Queen Mary has 3 smoke stacks, the Titanic has four. I did not know this at the beginning of the summer).

A Titanic love, is how I’m thinking of it.

Years ago, when I was studying for my PhD exams and thus doing a lot of procrastinatory reading, I indulged in one of those fabulously long New Yorker articles about something you don’t particularly think you’re interested in, but the writing draws you in despite the topic (I lost the better part of a week in college to a 3-part piece about interstate trucking).

This happened to be a piece about pilots, and how airline pilots learn to fly, how difficult it is to get the hours in the air required for a commercial pilot’s license unless you’re in the military first (or independently wealthy). And while I was absorbed in the piece, I mentioned it to a friend, whose dad was a commercial pilot at the time, and he said that while of course there’s a lot of complicated work involved in flying a plane, in some ways, once you’ve got that big bird up in the air, it’s kind of like driving a bus. And I found that so comforting, somehow. I’ve never been terribly afraid of flying, but it always used to make me feel a bit anxious, like I needed to concentrate very hard to keep the plane aloft. But now, after the take-off is accomplished and the plane’s leveled off, I tend to relax and think, “Automatic pilot. Like driving a bus.”

Having spent 11 hours on planes yesterday, and today feeling the effects of the 10-hour time difference I crossed, I’ve been thinking a lot about automatic pilot, and how much I wish I could engage it right now. Of course, pilots don’t use it when they are tired, but to avoid getting tired. They can set the course and relax a bit, knowing that they don’t have to concentrate for five or ten solid hours on each little adjustment required to keep a plane in the air. Now I’m not saying that my life here at home is quite like keeping a plane flying, and I’m not responsible for 300 people in this house, but the two people I do share responsibility for are reacting to their jet lag with an astonishing relentlessness, requiring continual food and drink and books and thoughtful responses to incessant “why” questions (Eli will not be brushed off with “Because” right now) and tape and markers and help with lego creations. They are very happy, and very energetic, and –unlike most days when they will go off and play by themselves for a little while and even (Eli anyway) nap for a couple hours in the middle of it–requiring a lot of participation and witnessing to their play, while I just want to curl up in a ball and nap. Why don’t they? That’s my why question for the day.

I guess the auto-pilot system for parenting is called a babysitter. With all the plans I made for this trip, that’s one that slipped through the cracks. Next time.

We’re leaving for a big vacation in a few days, and so Tony and I have been reading a lot of guidebooks:

Apparently, Ben thought he could do just as well:

This was a big week for the Grant family, as both boys began new summer programs.

Ben’s attending a language immersion program at the local French-American school in preparation for our trip next month, the first time he’s gone to any kind of class without a parent, or any other kid he knew, or without even visiting the building ahead of time. Typically, he was more concerned about his lunch options than about the whole communication in a foreign language aspect (hmm, I wonder where he gets this from?!) But Tony took him the first day, and Ben quickly found the Lego, so the communication issue was rendered moot: the language of Lego is universal.

Meanwhile, Eli began preschool! After a year away, we’re back at our beloved, rough and tumble co-op, a school recently described in a local paper as the “best educational experience in the Bay Area” (hear that, Stanford?) I took him in and stayed for my work day; later he reported to Tony that he was “half wif Mama, half no Mama.” Today, he did the morning all by himself, and reported to me afterwards, to explain his lack of socks, “Mama, some kids throwed water… and… never mind.” Good boy: handled the water play and isn’t a tattle-tale.

Tony and I are giddy: for the first time in 6 years, 3 months, and 12 days of parenting, we have twelve hours a week of scheduled, reliable childcare.