Record Snow Day

The record-breaking snow begins for us when the boy notices a garbage truck wearing a plow.

When the snow actually comes hard and fast, the garbage men get their revenge by burying the trash cans on every New York City street corner in lumpy piles of snow. And the snow certainly does come--the storm dropped the most snow on us since whoever does it started keeping records (about 1847, I think they said on the news), which is to say around 27 inches. At one point, it falls at 5 inches an hour, about as fast as snow can fall. I know as much as I do about this because the television is awash with this story where everyone knows the plot and few if anyone gets hurt.

We have these big windows in our living/dining room looking out on a park behind our building, and both the boy and the girl love to press their faces to the glass, waiting for something to catch their attention. (Grandpa and grandma seem to rather like just looking out, too, whenever they visit.) On Saturday morning before the storm, the possibility of snow is too abstract to be distracting, and so they content themselves with passing birds or the dogs pulling their owners along the pavers. But by the time we go up for dinner at our friends on the 14th floor that afternoon, we can't see across the Hudson river. And by the time we get home that evening, before baths and books and stories, the park below has become a fuzzy memory.

They both get up pretty early Sunday, and nobody is immune from the wonder of the footprintless snow. The Parks Department has fenced off the grass for the winter, turning the park into a luscious tray of cupcakes. The boy can't wait to get outside so that he can throw snowballs at me (so he tells me), and we pile on the layers and head out, including momma and the girl. The wind is brisk and the girl is tired, so my wife takes her in after big flakes get caught in her long eyelashes for the first time.

Some of the sidewalks have been scooped but some haven't. It's too cold to pack for throwing, and the boy instead leaps into the fresh piles, coming up with a smile and a face full of snow. Everywhere I turn I can step knee-deep into the stuff. He gets me to sit down in a tall drift to make a chair, and I'm right there in his joy. We soon go around to the front of the building and cross the street to the playground. It's inundated, but that doesn't stop us from going down all the slides and across the bridges. The concrete elephant that will spray him in May is now only a hint of trunk poking out of a cloud. Slogging up the stairs to go down the yellow slide, my son tells me, "Take a big step, daddy. You can do it, daddy."

And he's right.

When the cold insinuates its way past all our layers, we go inside. It's a struggle to get him in, despite his having mittens filling up with snow. I'm able, somehow, to convince him that it will all still be around later and that we can come back outside to make more "prints." Inside we drink hot cocoa and talk with momma and the girl about our pink cheeks and our artic adventures. He says, while gazing tiredly out the large window, "I hope that it's winter for a long time."

By the end of the week, the weather will warm and the snow will disappear rather quickly--so warm and so quickly, in fact, that even he will be dreaming instead of the possibilities of spring.

Happy "Tet"!

We wake up this morning to a gray sky and wet sidewalks running through the park. Wonderfully, it's after 7 a.m., now that the girl has settled into sleeping right up until--or even past--sunrise. This development is rather new, and I'm beginning to look forward to the day when my eyes no longer burn when I blink.

Today is "Tet" or New Year, probably the most important holiday in Vietnam. The year is new (roughly) according to the Chinese calendar, which begins with the second new moon after the winter solstice. It's a pretty loud day across Asia--fireworks for days and much, much eating--but we intend to observe it with the usual amount of house noise. The girl, now nine months, has learned to make this sound where she sings a note and then wobbles the back of her hand in her mouth to make it go up and down. She gets a kick out of it, and it does trigger smiles around the room. The boy has his own chorus of sounds, though most of them are quirky statements and performances. Yesterday, he looked out our big windows and sighed, "I don't see Poland." This is completely understandable, of course; Poland is rather far away. We can't even see Brooklyn, in fact, what with all the recent apartment buildings being thrown up around our neighborhood. Oh, yes, and his babysitter is Polish.

This Tet brings in the year of the dog--my year. Supposedly dogs embody loyalty, stubbornness, and honesty, and they're known to keep secrets. Tradition has it (I think) that when a year of your sign arrives your year reverses--that is, if you've just come off a bad year, you're due for success. I consider this good news since we've just come through a hard year, an unfair year, a year seemingly eager to teach us the surprisingly many ways in which we can't quite have what we want. That said, our girl did arrive all big and true in 2005, breaking through what my family (and especially the women who have married into it) call "The Curse of Boys." Child after child, all male--my brother and his wife have three--but somehow our little one made it through.

We head out for a walk and eventually to the grocery store. My wife makes pho for the Big Events such as Tet and the Fall of Saigon, and the boy loves it. Not long after he left the jar and the bottle behind, he would eat as much pho as you would put in front of him. He still goes through two bowls, even on the days when he decides that eating really is optional and realizes what kind of rise he can get out of daddy when he leaves his plate full. Anyway, we have this double stroller called a Phil & Ted, and the kids ride together bunk-bed style. The girl usually rides on the bottom, but these days the boy wants to walk, which means she gets to ride up top, all smiles and kicking legs. The groceries have to go below.

Back home, we realize that somehow the sliver of ginger didn't make it, so the boy and I decide to head back out to a small local grocery. We need ginger, and now the boy informs us that we need Tet treats as well. He's been interested in this book about Tet that we gave him for Christmas (ironic, I suppose), in which mice go to the market for good things to eat during the fireworks. He's decided that this day's treat should be a "Thomas the Tank Engine Cake," but I tell him that however wonderful that might be, we'll be lucky to find one of those delicious but pre-packaged cakes in the cardboard box with the little teasing cellophane window. We put on his yellow slicker and his boots, anticipating some swell puddles. Outside, the water hasn't pooled like we thought it would, but the walk still does us both some good. I open the door for him, and he gives me a "Thank you, daddy." He shows me the tomatoes ("you squeeze, squeeze, squeeze them to make pizza pie"), wants me to smell the limes. They have ginger but no cakes to speak of, so we settle for a soft mango.

Back home, the warm house itself smells good enough to eat. The girl is already working through some rice noodles, my wife is busy over the broth steaming on the stove. She ladles it over the glassy white noodles flecked with cilantro and onion. We all sit. We each work to the bottom of a bowl, then another, the girl can't get enough of the noodles she picks up herself. The soup loosens me, and the year ahead begins to seem like it might have room for us. This will be a year of change--the girl will walk and talk, the boy will likely start school, and our careers, such as they are, may take on radically new shapes. The year, if only for a meal, truly seems new.

Happy Tet!

6 Month Quiz

Our daughter just returned from her six-month checkup. Since my wife is now back at work, it was a special day out for daddy and little girl. She's not as taken with trains as her older brother, which meant that much comforting was required to pull out a smile from her on the 4 train. Eventually, she did manage to light up the underground.

But to the details. Each time we head to the Upper East Side for a checkup, we place our bets and take our chances. We thought that you might like a chance to play along.

(1) Our daughter weighed 14 lb. 10 oz. in late September. Her weight on November 1, according to the nurse who can't get past referring to me as "Daddy," was:

        (a) 15 lb. 14 oz.
        (b) 16 lb.
        (c) 16 lb. 3 oz.
        (d) 17 lb.

The correct answer is (b), the guess submitted by our new nanny (who we love, by the way, regardless of the mildly disturbing things we've been hearing about the performance of our last one). She eked out a victory over my wife who guessed (a) and myself who guessed (c). I added (d) because multiple choice seems to need at least four options. If you're curious, her weight puts her solidly in the 50th percentile, where she has camped out pretty much from the beginning.

(2) She (our daughter, not our nanny), was measured at 26 inches in September. Her length at this last visit was:

        (a) 26 inches
        (b) 27 inches
        (c) 28 inches
        (d) 28 1/4 inches

If you guessed (c), you're right. Hard to believe, but she grew a full two inches in a month, pushing her right to the edge of the percentile chart. From what we can gather from squinting, she's either in the 99th or 100th percentile for height--though I'm fairly confident that she's not the longest six-month old in the world, past or present. Since she now sits up on her own quite well, perhaps we should now start talking about her height instead of her length.

Did I mention that she's sitting up quite well on her own?

Her grandfather thinks that she's at least in the 125th percentile for cuteness, and he was a rather stern state district judge for many years.

No objection from me (except that his number sounds a little low).

More later perhaps.

Do Me a Solid

Two big bits of news to report today: First, our daughter went to the doctor for her check up and for her polio shot. She weighs in at 14 lb. 10 oz., which means 50th percentile. By their count she's also 26 inches long, which makes her apparently longer than 80% of the girls her age. Obviously she's going to Princeton or Harvard (her choice).

The polio shot resonates with us, too--my father contracted bulbar polio at age 6. It's not that he's had a poor life in the 60 years that followed, but it's been more, well, complicated. And his body has been falling in on itself lately, almost as if the virus has come back for something important it left. Officially, it's called post-polio syndrome, and it's still largely a mystery. There's much more to say here, of course--sons make themselves of their fathers--but this moment belongs to the girl.

Anyway, the second thing to report is that our daughter had her first taste of solid food today--namely rice cereal mixed with breast milk. Some kids, we're told, resist the spoon in the mouth, but she took to it as easily as her brother did (perhaps because they're both half asian). She ate the first batch my wife made for her and most of the second, and then followed it with four ounces of formula, falling asleep as the last half ounce pooled in the nipple. Her sleeping has improved to nearly through the night, but we're hoping that the thick rice in her belly will help her dreams grow even longer.

May those dreams be sweet as well as long, little love. Good night.

Summer Happened

We left our tracks in the sandbox like pioneers nosing around the moon.