Godlings (godparent siblings)

Friends

Little puzzles

We had parent-teacher conferences Monday. The teacher started the conversation off by saying, "Maybe we better talk about Arden first, otherwise we may never get to her."

She was completely serious. We had scheduled an hour to talk about both kids. And, talk of Sawyer could have easily filled the entire hour. Our dear son continues to challenge us all daily while Arden sails along with barely a mention. We have an entire "daily program" worked out for Sawyer. We are taking a parenting class to learn techniques for helping him deal with his anger and outbursts. But, I'm lucky to get a end-of-day report on Arden at all.

Arden is the typical "flexible" child. She's highly social at school and has found a gaggle of girlfriends whom she runs around with — Ellie and Allie — just to be confusing. I barely walk in the door in the morning and she's across the room to hug her girls and off they go to play.

Arden, according to her teacher, is amazing at puzzles. I thought Sawyer was our puzzle guy. But Arden isn't even 3 yet and can complete a 24-piece jigsaw puzzle by herself with the most amazing patience. I found this out only after buying her a princess puzzle she insisted on having, despite my concern that it was too difficult. As a parent, I was blown away when she completed the thing alone on her first attempt. But, to hear the teacher say the same thing just confirmed it for me. During free choice Arden usually chooses "puzzles, books and games" over dramatic play, building blocks or arts and crafts, the teacher said.

She's bright, but we knew that, and she's well beyond her age level in every area except gross motor skills — i.e. "playing catch." This is our fault. We don't have balls and we don't play catch.

She's also shy in big groups, and the teacher said that they hope to help bring her out of her shell and get her talking in circle. I asked her about this one night — talking during circle time — and she said, "It's too scary."

Every once in a blue moon she'll let her true colors fly with her teachers, and the EXTREMELY OPINIONATED side of her will accidentally pop out. Then she'll hang her head and sulk. Now, THAT's the Arden I know and love.

Sawyer — big shock — chooses dramatic play during free choice every time. You've never seen a kid spend more time in the land of Make Believe. He's the same way at home. Give him a couple chairs and pillows and about 2 minutes and he'll have concocted a whole scenario that involves cats stuck in trees and a firetruck to the rescue.

He's a natural leader, the teacher said, and often creates extravagant games of pretend at school that he ropes all the other children into playing. He'll assign roles and set the parameters for the scenario. He has the most amazing imagination and the kids are drawn to him like flies to honey, she said.

The good news is that he's spending more time in arts and crafts this year, but he still struggles with perfectionism. In the past, he's often avoided trying things he can't do perfectly, like cutting with scissors — especially as a lefty. But, this year, he's taking more risks in that area. He brings home art projects everyday, which makes me happy.

Socially he floating, having lost his rock — Sylvia — to kindergarten. He doesn't know who his new bff is. And that's hard for him.

Our major struggle — one that brings me to tears — is how Sawyer continues to have extreme anger management issues at school. Several times a week, he'll completely lose it over something that doesn't go his way or something he's been told to do when he doesn't want to. He'll throw a fit and have to be isolated in the middle of the room where he can't destroy anything or hurt anyone.

I can't help but think he's like a little Napoleon. So charismatic and compelling to everyone around him, but with a ferocious temper when things don't go his way.

According to the teacher, we are about one step away from receiving a behavioral referral and we've been told that if we don't get this under control now, Sawyer will struggle for much of his life.

He's incredibly bright, she added, and asks the most brilliant questions. He is still the light of the classroom, but he can just as easily be the cloud that darkens the whole preschool.

We are seriously considering holding him back to give him another year to mature emotionally before sending hm into the big cruel world of Kindergarten.

We feel blessed to have such amazing teachers who are willing to work with our kids so closely and to be so patient with them. Some days I feel like any other school would have written Sawyer off already.

The most amazing thing to me is that at school the kids have totally separate lives. At home, they are like twins, constantly playing and fighting. But, even in a class of just 15 kids, they don't even hang out. They have independent identities. And, that makes me happy.

Where History and Skiing Collide

Tomorrow I am throwing an event for 160 people. Did I mention that?

160 people. I was shooting for 200. I was incredibly concerned last weekend when it was only 85 people. And I was still worried Tuesday when it was 100. So when that turned, somehow, into 160 people in two days, I was thrilled. Leave it to the Fraser Valley to wait until the last minute, said one of the two fabulous museum administrators that basically did all the hard work. (Tim and Darcy ROCK! *ROCK with a glorifying singing voice). Wait until the last minute people did. 160 people. (Can I collapse into a chair yet?) We may, yet, have a few stragglers signing up or coming through the door unannounced — we'd love that too.

This is my inaugural event both with the Grand County Historical Association and, basically, the whole world ... if you don't count my wedding, which had only 50 people and a ski slope. I was voted onto the board June 10 and immediately assigned chair of the event committee because the marketing committee was already taken and, well, nobody else wanted to do it. When I say committee, in this sense, it's typically a one man show. (Oh, and Tim Nicklas and Darcy Miller ROCK!*) It's laughable, really — ME in charge of events. I can barely organize dinner. But, I have fully utilized the strategy of delegation. (Have I mentioned, Tim and Darcy ROCK!*).

I agreed to join the board in the first place because the executive director was earnest and I had a good friend also on the board. They both resigned one month later. Looking across the table at four dedicated board pioneers in their legacy years, I knew I had to stay and help. Now I am the Marketing AND Events Committee.

Somehow, I talked many wonderful, generous people into jumping on board — in particular author Frank Pilkington whose book about the history behind the names of ski runs, "What's in a name at Winter Park and Mary Jane," became the driving theme. And thank you Kristen Lodge for tossing his name my way. Now go train for Ironman (you seriously ROCK*). I knew we needed something about ski history to make this event exciting, and it was already penned onto the calendar five days before the kick off of ski season. On Tuesday, Aug. 10 I emailed Frank, and the following day he graciously agreed to speak.

Then I made a Hail-Mary, late-August pitch to Winter Park Resort, which is — by the way — the oldest, continuously operational ski area in Colorado. Mistalynn Lee and Gary DeFrange blew me away with their generosity, offering us a place to hold the dinner at the base of the ski area, days before opening. They even helped pay for the food.

Francie de Vos jumped in during September and offered us some help planning before diving headfirst into the campaign to elect Freeta Goodhome as Grand Dog. She won, raising about $1 Billion. (The animal shelter and advocates are the real winners.) Before doing that, however, she sent us Karen Gadberry, HR Director for the resort, who agreed to be our emcee and helped us spread the word.

Our staff and the five other active board members, several in their 80s, went out and canvased the streets for donations to our silent auction. We received more than 60 items including a dog sled ride, a trip to the hot springs and an Adirondack chair made entirely out of skis by the Guest Speaker himself.

We've had 10 volunteers step up to help this week from out of the woodwork — half of them are under 40. I can honestly say that there's a lot of excitement building around this.

I saw the setup tonight. It looks better than I ever imagined. Our tables are named after historic ski runs — marked by Green Circles, Blue Squares and Black Diamonds — tomorrow, before we begin setting up at 4 p.m., the "events committee" is having a major arts & crafts session at the museum with Darcy.

Now, I've just got to figure out how the heck I'm going to have time to get dressed between playing with scissors and glue, sloshing through the mud with our parking volunteers and carrying dusty cardboard boxes of books and silent auction items up three flights of stairs.

And, while I'm at it, I better go figure out what I'm going to wear. Good night!

November chills

My Indian Summer has definitely turned to winter this week. Time for a new flag.

What's old is new

Construx was a brand of plastic building toys introduced by Fisher-Price in 1983. For a long time, they were one of my brother's most favorite toys. He recalls: "They made the BEST g.i. Joe and muscle men forts." The toy featured beam-like pieces of varying lengths that snapped on to cubical connector knots in order to build large shapes. Sadly, Construx was discontinued in 1988. Stupid people. My mother, God bless her basement, kept the old box of Construx as well as a big box of Capsela (and whole knows what else remains to be unearthed). Mixed in those boxes were a whole bunch of other treasures like some old 1970s Matchbox cars. When Justin came around, we resurrected these toys out of the basement. But, he never showed much interest in these kinds of building toys. The boxes moved with us to Colorado and have been tucked away in the top of a closet ever since. Over the weekend I pulled the one box of Construx down for Sawyer. We didn't hear from him for the rest of the weekend.


He built, and rebuilt, discovered the glow-in-the-dark pieces and — WHEELS! It makes me kind of sad about all the toys we gave away when we were young – the original Star Wars action figures, the Weeble Treehouse, Playmobile, the Fisher Price Sesame Street "People" village.



Ah, the joy of growing up in the dawn of plastics. I did save my Barbie and all her 1970s attire, which will be handed down to Arden one of these days. And the doll house (which needs a remodel) along with all its fancy furniture and tiny little pieces will someday be hers.

My mom's closet also holds hidden treasures. When I went home in August, she gave me these kicky boots that she wore in the 1960s and 70s.

They definitely don't make shoes like they used to (I'm lucky to see my shoes last three years). I pulled out the disintegrating liners, washed the boots out, polished them up and voila! Retro awesomeness.

I think about all my moves — in the past decade alone I've moved six times. Partly because I lack space and partly because I feel like stuff just weighs me down, I shed my things whenever possible and try to keep my sentimental items contained to one box. That said, I sure do enjoy the vintage hand-me-downs.