Monthly Archives: June 2013

A Lonesome Baker Men Addendum

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I forgot to include one brief anecdote in the previous post regarding our visit to Texas, so I thought I’d write it up now, while it’s on my mind.

If you’ve looked at the pictures, you know that the tail end of the trip included a group bath for some of the younger kids: Julia, Joe, Laura, Kay and Kate. Joe was, obviously, the only boy in the group, a fact that went largely unnoticed and unremarked upon until Kate adorably piped up, “Joe-Joe has a tail!”

That was cute enough on its own, but Julia, never one to let a misconception slide by, responded, “No! That’s his penis!”

Fortunately, the conversation pretty much ended there.

Lonesome Baker Men 2009

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Baker

Continuing our jaunt through the distant past, we’ve posted a new set of photos. These pictures, which are almost exactly four years old today, date back to our 2009 trip to Texas to visit friends from Rice at Dave and Rebecca Hyatt’s house in The Woodlands. Joe and Erica Shidle flew in from Chicago with Laura and Kay; Mason and Kathy Hart trekked across town from their place in Houston with their son Dylan; and Paul Williams drove in from Belton, Texas with Zane and Diana—sadly, his wife Joanna couldn’t make it. That, or she wisely chose to stay far away from the potentially explosive gathering.

Four years out, a couple things about the trip stand out in my memory. First, Houston was every bit as hot as I remembered it, and perhaps even more so. Second, Dave and Rebecca have a great pool, complete with a robot that cleans it automatically overnight, and they were fantastic about opening their home to fourteen people—seven adults and seven children—most of whom stayed overnight for several days. Somewhat miraculously, the structure was still largely intact when we departed.

As you can see from the photos, we took the opportunity to visit our old stomping grounds at Rice while we were in town. The campus has grown dramatically since we all graduated, but all the same, there were many aspects that seemed nearly untouched by the intervening years. Sadly, Baker College, where we all (except Rebecca) lived was undergoing remodeling and expansion at the time, so we weren’t able to go inside. I’m told that the facade is nearly unrecognizable since the completion of construction in 2010.

Prior to this trip, the last time everyone got together was in 2004, so if we want to stick to an every-five-years cadence, we’ll have to plan something for next summer. Assuming we pull it off, you can look for the pictures sometime in 2017. Of course, at least three more kids will have been added to the mix by that time, so the choice of venue may be a significant sticking point.

In case you were wondering, the titles of this post and the associated album are a reference to an unfortunate photo and caption that appeared in the Rice Thresher during my senior year. For the record, three of the five guys pictured had girlfriends at the time of publication.

Joe Turned Three

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In honor of Joe’s recent seventh birthday, we’re taking this opportunity to post heretofore unpublished photos from his third birthday, all the way back in 2009. The set includes a number of highlights, not least of which is the awesome cake Julie made in the shape of a dinosaur train.

This update also includes Joe celebrating wearing his first pair of big boy underpants. That day, when we thought we were done with diapers once and for all, was a happy day indeed.

In more recent news, the additional time I’ve been afforded to spend with my family has been productive. We moved a tremendous quantity of books, mementos and other artifacts up to the attic this week, and are finally getting close to being ready to paint Joe’s room. We also took the training wheels off of Joe’s bike last weekend; we’ll have a post with pictures shortly, but he’s getting the hang of it as long as we stick to left turns and don’t ask him to brake.

Julia Tries T-Ball

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Following up on my earlier threat to keep posting pictures, here’s a a set highlighting Julia’s first season of t-ball, four years ago this past spring. Back then, Julia was in Junior K at Action Day Primary Plus, and her team’s practices were right after school, which made our lives much simpler. It was our first time doing a team sport with either of the kids, and we hit all the bumps in the road you might expect, particularly considering Julia’s spirited personality, but Coach Longcore was great with the kids and showed the patience of a saint.

Fun fact: Julia still wears her Mariners jersey today.

Spring 2013 / Joe’s Seventh Birthday

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Seeing as I’m going to have a lot of time on my hands all of a sudden, it seems like an opportune time to get caught up on some pictures. So, off we go.

First, Julia’s spring school portrait came in, and you can find it in her class picture album. The spring portraits are taken in front of a green screen—the school didn’t actually haul the kids out to a woodland stream for the photo shoot—so we can provide alternate versions with different, equally unlikely, backgrounds if you like.

You might notice that there’s no corresponding spring portrait for Joe. As it turns out, when his teacher, Mrs. Glenn, asked the kids who were scheduled to have their pictures taken to line up, he misunderstood and, well, didn’t. He was very apologetic when he came home, thinking that Julie and I would be upset. Secretly, however, I was probably just as happy to get the check we’d written back un-cashed, especially in light of recent developments.

There’s also an entirely new album, covering various events of this spring and Joe’s seventh birthday. Quite a bit has happened over the last few months: Julia had braces put in and played the trumpet in the inaugural Booksin band—there are pictures of the end-of-year concert in the album. Of course, Julia privately admitted that sometimes she doesn’t bother pressing the buttons on her trumpet as she’s playing, but she’s performed Hot Cross Buns at home and sounded a lot better than I would.

We let Joe choose where we went out to eat to celebrate his birthday, and he chose to go back to Benihana, where we took Julia last year. Unfortunately for Joe, because his birthday was on a Monday night—and the night of the band concert—we actually went out the night before and saved cake and presents for after the show.

Both kids survived the 2012–2013 school year and are headed into summer camp starting next week; in spite of my recent change of employment status, we decided to leave them signed up for camp for the time being in order to minimize the amount of disruption they perceive. We’ll re-evaluate as the situation evolves.

Joe had a great year, though he did manage to force a second consecutive teacher into retirement. All told, three of the six teachers Julia and Joe have had at Booksin have retired immediately after having our kids in their classes. Mrs. Glenn was fantastic, however, and Joe thoroughly enjoyed first grade; he ended up being the class champion for the “Reading is Cool” program, which counts the number of pages the kids read at home during the school year. His handwriting, on the other hand, is pretty atrocious, much as mine was at his age. Julie has vowed that he’s going to spend a fair portion of the summer practicing.

Julia had a very Julia year. She continued to excel academically: she was one of only two students in Mr. Alderette’s class to finish the online math drills the school makes available, and she is reading well above her ostensible grade level. Her favorite after-school activity by far has been the GATE science program, a fact that brings a smile to this IMSA alumnus’s face.

On the other hand, Julia has continued to demonstrate her spirited nature in the classroom and at home. As well as she’s done in school, her greatest achievements have come in the realm of sheer cussedness. At one point, Mr. Alderette was actually sending home weekly progress reports on the level of disruption Julia was causing in class. Things seem to have come under control by the end of the year, but we’ll see when we review the kids’ report cards.

The aforementioned computerized math program, IXL, provides another amusing—if only in hindsight—example. Julie really, really wanted Julia to complete the third-grade sequence by the end of the year. Julia, for her part, was less driven to finish, but for the fact that Mr. Alderette would occasionally set up challenges in which the kids would receive Beanie Babies, which he called Brainy Babies, for finishing a certain number of lessons. Exacerbating the situation was the fact that we didn’t really start pushing for Julia to finish until the second half of the school year—and, if we’re being honest, the latter portion of the second half of the year—so the effort was tremendously backloaded, which the majority of the work being done in April and May.

As you can imagine, this resulted in a highly combustible environment, with all parties behaving at times in ways that made none of us proud. I honestly feel that actually getting Julia to sit still, concentrate and double-check her work was more effort than the math itself. Nevertheless, she finished—aided by the fact that Julie also set out the promise of Brainy Babies—just a couple days before the end of the year. We’re left with a house full of Beanie Babies and hopefully minimal psychological damage for all concerned.

Julia herself commented on the situation in the context of a class project in which she was asked to write a letter to Fern from Charlotte’s Web. In her letter, Julia asked Fern how she felt about her frequent visits to Wilbur the pig at her uncle’s nearby barn. She then went on to explain that were she in Fern’s shoes, she would not be able to visit as often as she might like, because her mother forces her to do at least 100 hours of IXL every night.