Parenthood: The Book

From the moment the baby arrived,
it was obvious that he was the boss.
He  put Mom and Dad on a round-the-clock schedule,
with no time off.
And then he set up his office right smack-dab
in the middle of the house.
He made demands.
Many,many demands.
And he was quite particular.
If things
weren't done
to his immediate
satisfaction, 
he had a fit.

So starts The Boss Baby, one of the newest picture books in our classroom. When I first read this book, chuckling to myself after every page, my immediate thought was "Who do I know that's having a baby?" It seemed like the perfect gift.

Of course someone without children probably couldn't fully relate.

He conducted meetings.
Lots and lots of meetings,
many in the middle of the night.

This story is probably much more humorous a few months into parenthood. In fact, maybe it's better suited for a first birthday. In addition to a nice bedtime story it would provide parents with an opportunity to look back and laugh at all they have survived - so far.

There are many books written to help parents do just that. Survive. Tricia and I read a couple. The first was What to Expect When You're Expecting, followed by What to Expect the 1st Year then ...the 2nd year and so on. This series is like the Dr. Spock's Baby and Childcare for this generation. We read the first book on pregnancy. Or, more accurately, Tricia read it and I browsed. It explained what was happening with the development of the baby in each month of pregnancy. It was fun to follow along and know that whatever was lurking in Tricia's stomach now had fingernails. Fingernails!

"It could start clawing it's way out of there at any moment, Tricia."

We also read the second book on the first year with the baby. We were a bit concerned that we didn't really know anything about babies and how to keep them alive. Later we found that keeping them alive was really easy. It was getting them to sleep that was the impossible part. With Harper we just kept picking her up and rocking her. Each time we would lay her down for a nap we'd gently, and ever-so-slowly, set her into her crib and then embark on the five minute scoot across the floor toward the door, trying our best not to step on a squeaky floorboard or to let the door squeak as we walked out. Many times it didn't work out and she awoke again, screaming her head off.

Harper didn't sleep at night either. We'd have to go get her and rock her to sleep on a fairly regular basis. Tricia probably did this more than I did. I hate to fit into a gender stereotype but I was pretty good at staying asleep - or at least pretending to. By the time Ainsley came along I decided we couldn't do the sleepless nights again. We needed help.

We went to the bookstore and picked up a copy to Dr. Ferber's much controversial book Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems. I desperately wanted to know how to teach a baby to sleep through the night. Unfortunately I found that I had to read - or at least skim- four or five whole chapters before I got to the good part. The first hundred pages or so was dedicated to helping us understand babies and their behaviors. This one time in my life I didn't want to understand. I just wanted to be told what to do. In specific terms.

I finally found the right chapter and learned why the book is so controversial. Dr. Ferber teaches that the best way to get a baby to sleep through the night is essentially to allow them to cry it out. The first night you wait maybe ten minutes after they start crying to come in, rub their back (never picking them up), speak softly to them, and walk out again. Each time they cry you wait ten minutes before coming in. The next night it's fifteen minutes, and so on. The idea is that you're reassuring them that you are still there but teaching them to ultimately put themselves back to sleep. We do this as adults. We actually wake up, at least partially, throughout the night and put ourselves back to sleep without even noticing it. Babies can do it too.

It took Harper a year-and-a-half to sleep through the night. After reading Dr. Ferber's book and putting it into practice (you had to wait until the baby was at least six months old or so to do this) Ainsly was "cured" within two nights. I suddenly became a big believer in Dr. Ferber and recommended it to every droopy-eyed parent I knew or met at the playground.

As the kids grow older I find we don't really ever seek out these types of books anymore. We've learned to trust ourselves and to watch and listen to others we respect and admire. And, of course, much of what we do as parents was modeled for us by our own parents who succeeded in not raising us to be pychopaths or even Republicans (a little joke for Tricia's dad).

I did, however, recently come upon a book on raising older children that I really love. Of all places, it was already on our bookshelf. Titled Raising Children: A Guide to Raising Children, by Children, it was written for me nine years ago by my fifth grade students at New City School. After Harper was born I took a six week paternity leave. When I returned my students had created, on their own, a book to teach me all I needed to know about being a parent.

It is organized into various sections:

The Rules About Kids
You don't have to tell us we look like rag muffins when we go to school.
We will shut up as long as we are eating.
We will always love you. 
We are only kids. 

School Days
Always pick a school where both you and your child feel welcome.

The Top 10 Things That Kids Hate That Parents Do
Hanging up underwear when we have friends over.
Think that the ugly clothes that are cheaper look "exactly" the same as the brand name ones.
Show naked baby pictures. 


Interests
Your kid has his or her own interests. They may not be the same as yours but support them fully. Encourage your kids to do fun after school activities...That will give them a chance to do more of what they love.
Also try to share your kids interests. Maybe they could teach you a thing or two. 
Always remember that they will explore new things and may like something for a while and then stop liking it. But don't ever force your child to do something that they don't feel comfortable with. Have fun!


Top Five Things that Kids Like Their Parents to Do
5. Let us see PG-13 movies when we are at least 10 years old.
4. Let us get our ears pierced whenever we want.
3. When we don't get such a good grade encourage us instead of ripping our heads off.
2. Buy us things.

and the most important...

1. Love us. 

Now that's sound advice.

Winter Falls

 

Poor, poor Palmetto tree. For the second year in a row we received a surprise snow storm here in the Columbia area. The snow, a couple of inches at most, mercilessly weighed down the fronds of our not so tropical looking tree. Amazingly it will survive. I, on the other hand, may not.

The kids of course loved it. They were quick to run out the door in the morning. We no longer have all the winter gear we once did when living in the Midwest so the kids went out with what they had. Ainsley was all bundled up whereas Ty didn't even wear a coat - or socks. He was eager to try out the new Keen sandals he got for Christmas. They were actually intended for stomping through streams and creeks in spring, summer, and fall, not a winter snow storm. He lasted all of about ten minutes before realizing his error in judgment. That was sooner than I would have guessed. 

They tried to make a snowman in the front. However, all the dead grass rolled into the snow making for the hairiest balls of snow you have ever seen. He looked shady - like the type of snowman you might expect to find in a dark alley.                                                                                                                                           Tess liked the snow too. She ran around the backyard waiting for someone to throw her a ball. When we were still living in St. Louis our old German Shepard, Cosmo, used to lay out in the snow for hours at a time. Because of an eternally clogged drain we had a large pool of water that would collect in the middle of our driveway. It sat there for weeks at a time freezing, melting, and then refreezing. When the air temperature would venture above 32 degrees Cosmo would lay right in the middle of the frigid water. It's amazing how well adapted to cold weather animals can be. I am not.   

I make it out to be worse than it is, though. I don't really so much hate winter. It's just not my favorite season. I was reminded of why during our nearly week-long visit in St. Louis. In our six days there we never once saw the sun. When we lived there I remember this happening for much of December, January, and February. This was why my favorite day of the year was March 1st -not Christmas, Thanksgiving, or even the first day of summer.  Because in my mind flipping the calendar to March meant the return of the sun and warmer temperatures. Of course this wasn't always true. There were occassional March snowstorms and stretches below freezing. This would drive me mad. I'd bundle up and walk the kids to the zoo all the same but it with a defeated spirit.

Surprisingly Tricia and I got married in winter. December 31st to be exact. Tricia's grandmother warned "No one will come!" 

"That's okay," I assured her. We would be there.

It was on a Tuesday night at 7:00pm and people did show up. It was an unseasonably warm 40 degrees outside and there was no snow. Now each year when we go out to celebrate our anniversary, yesterday was our fourteenth, not only do we have to avoid jacked up New Year's Eve pricing but the weather as well.

This year we decided to make the best of a winter anniversary getaway and visited Asheville, North Carolina. On the drive up we stopped in Brevard to hike out to a couple of waterfalls. Despite the fact that is was in the 50's and dry at home the mountains were chilly and snowy. Not too chilly, though. Always ultra-concerned with packing light, I chose not to bring my hiking boots along. I figured we'd only be out for a couple of miles at most and I could make due with my tennis shoes. It was a mistake. The paths were very snowy and icy and I had to ginger-foot my way through a number of sections. Tricia joked that I was walking like an old man - all hunched over and shuffling my feet a few inches at a time. She, on the other hand, was wearing her earwarmers and could not hear most of what I said to her. "WHAT?" she'd yell when I had said something. We were quite the site I am sure.

The first falls we saw was Hooker Falls. Despite it's name there was no gathering of prostitutes. In fact, we were the only ones there.                                             Hooker Falls constitutes the fourth falls in a short stretch of the Little River. It was really beautiful. While not too tall, maybe twenty feet at most, it more than made up for it's short stature with it's respectable width and massive water flow. The snow and ice wrapped around the falling water making for quite a show. I pulled out my camera, snapped one shot, and the battery died. Luckily I had a second camera. Pulling it from my backpack, I soon found that its battery was dead as well. It's worth pointing out that I quit the Boy Scouts after only a few months. I'll blame that for having come unprepared.

From Hooker Falls we hiked on to see Triple Falls, High Falls, and then Bridal Veil Falls. We had seen the first two in summer conditions so it was fun to have the opportunity to see them in winter. Triple Falls are a series of stair-stacked falls. High Falls is a large-drop falls that, while beautiful to see, doesn't photograph too easily. Bridal Veil Falls, a new one to us, was largely a rock slide.  All-in-all we wound up hiking about six miles for the day.

The next day my mom and the kids came up to join us. We walked around the eclectic shops of Asheville and had a New Year's Dinner at a really cool Indian restaurant. The next morning we woke up early in hopes of finding a few more falls before heading back home. The weather was mild but rainy.  As we pulled off the interstate we made our way along a windy road. I was amazed to see that there was little to no snow given all the snow Tricia and I had seen just two days earlier. We found a very unofficial looking parking pull-off and set off walking across a small grassy field. Within a hundred yards or so we saw our trail branch off to the left into some high grasses and thorny plants.

Our destination was Bradley Falls. Bradley Falls has a very high drop and is seemingly in the middle of nowhere. We hiked and hiked and hiked without seeing a single soul. About half a mile in we came to a creek crossing. While the water was not incredibly high, it was incredibly cold. Fortunately we packed in our sandals which made wading across much easier. A few seconds into my crossing I was surprised to find that the water wasn't nearly as cold as I had anticipated. However, about ten seconds later my perspective had significantly changed. My immersed feet and ankles were so cold I thought I might die (perhaps a slight exaggeration). It was incredibly painful.    

Our trail quickly rose about a hundred feet above the creek and within twenty minutes or so we could hear the roar of the falls below us. We found a side trail that scrambled down the mountain side to a rock overlooking the falls. The rock was scary in that it wasn't all that large and there was no gentle slope down to the falls and creek. Rather, it was a sheer drop off of around sixty or seventy feet. I told the kids they were not allowed to stand and that noone could go near the edge. It was very nerve wracking. Still, Bradley Falls was very cool. It was pretty far away and partially obstructed by a tree so the photography wasn't all that great but being there was. 

The hike back was quick. Just as my mom made her second crossing of the creek in sandals, as the rest of us carefully scrambled across rocks to avoid the water, it began to rain. We hurried back to the van and drove home. As we got closer and closer to home the temperatures soared. It was about 70 degrees at home. Now that's a nice winter temperature!

Week In Review - Too Much to Write About!

I came back from our Christmas trip to St. Louis with more blog ideas than I possibly had time to write about. My buddy Tim gave me a small notebook on our last day of school before Winter Break that read "Fill these pages with important words and thoughts." He might be disappointed because, instead, I filled it with superficial observations and smart ass comments from our Christmas trip.

The first came just a few hours into our drive as we passed into Georgia. One of the very first billboards I saw read:

Make your ONE call to...
1-800-CALL -KEN
Ken Nugent Legal Services

Really? I know that colonial Georgia was basically a roaming prison, serving as a spot for England to send its less desirables, but I would hope that after these hundreds of years things would have changed. I've been to both Alabama and Louisiana and I know for a fact that a good deal of those "less desirables'" descendants are now living throughout the south. So why would Georgia allow Ken Nugent to welcome travelers with such a sign? Are there THAT many people getting arrested? Is there really that much money to be had from these people?

The second blog idea came on our second day with Tricia's parents. I made my first visit to church in five years. I really do not like church. As a child I went as often as three times a week - Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening. There was also church league bowling, softball, and volleyball. And youth group, play practices, and countless lunches and dinners. It wasn't the amount of time spent at church that turned me off, though. I just grew to question the likelihood of all those stories and the reasonableness of all those beliefs.

Tricia's parents church is quite different from the smallish Baptist church I grew up attending. It seats more than a thousand people. has two big screen TVs mounted behind the pulpit, and hosts religious and social events most, if not every, night of the week. The service lasted a little over an hour but the sermon itself was ten to fifteen minutes tops. The sermon was all about "breaking down the walls that we build around ourselves." The walls were a metaphor for our need for a sense of comfort, safety, etc. There were very few mentions of God or Jesus so it went well enough. The other fifty minutes were spent singing songs and listening to announcements. My mom asked how it went. "It went okay. Maybe I'll go back in another five or six years," I said. But probably not.

The third blog idea came when Tricia and I went out for a date night. We went to one of our favorite restaurants in St. Louis - an Indian place in the Central West End called Rasoi. Afterward we headed over to the Chase to see True Grit. As always, parking in the Central West End was nearly impossible. We finally found a spot but had only fifty cents for the meter. As Tricia will attest, I always seem to think that we don't need to feed the meter. "You don't have to pay after 5:00" I might argue. Or, "It's free on Sundays." Or worse, "No one even checks these meters!" I'm generally very much a rule follower. Like Ainsley I think people should follow the rules no matter what. I'll sit through a two minute red light at 3am with no cars anywhere in sight because that's what I'm supposed to do. I often stand on the curb and wait for what seems like forever for the walk signal even though there's no traffic. But for some reason when it comes to paying the meter I find every reason not to adhere to my legal obligations.

As we pulled into our parking spot and Tricia found that we only had two quarters she asked what I thought we should do. The movie didn't start for another hour (we were planning to walk over to the library to browse before heading down the block to the theater) and the movie was an hour and half at the very least.

"It's after six," I said. "You don't have to pay the meter after six."

"You always say that," she pointed out. "You NEVER think we have to pay the meter!"

"But I'm always right!"

Tricia sighed and looked up the street.

"Look," she said. "There's the meter reader!"

She was right. Two cars in front of us was a meter reader writing a ticket. After placing it under a windshield wiper he made his way up to the next car.

"We definitely have to get some change or find a parking garage now," she argued.

"No we don't," I said. "Look, he just checked all the cars on this block. It's 6:07 now. What are the chances he gets back to our block tonight? Euclid is a l-o-n-g street with a lot of meters. If anything we're more safe than ever."

It was dark but I can only imagine Tricia rolled her eyes. I really am hard to live with at times.

"Okay," she said. "But if we get a ticket you have to pay for it out of your own money."


"Ha, as if such a thing exists," I laughed.


We climbed out of the car and, ignoring the meter, pulled our jackets up around our ears and huddled together to head up the street. We instantly saw that the meter reader's car was parked just four spaces in front of our van. More debate ensued but we forged ahead. Once we got into the library I went to the information desk to ask how late you had to pay the meters. The librarian told me that they stop checking them at 7:00. Whether this meant you still have to pay them I wasn't sure but I headed back over to Tricia to gloat none-the-less.


"Well, go out and put our fifty cents," she told me. " At least we'll be paid until a quarter 'til or so."


I knew when to play nice and headed toward the front door. On the way I debated whether I should actually head out into the cold for what was certain to be a wasted effort (and wasted money) or if I should just hang out in the vestibule area for a few minutes and then head back in. Half an hour later, as we were heading out for the theater, Tricia, knowing me all too well, asked whether I had actually paid the meter or just pretended to. True to form I refused to say.


My fourth blog idea came a few nights later when attending "Christmas Eve" with Tricia's extended family. Due to busy schedules this party is never really on Christmas Eve but it's close enough. We haven't been able to attend this party the past few years so this was the first time we had seen these families in quite a while. Even when we lived in St. Louis we saw most of them only once a year, at this very party. They were like sometimes relatives.


I'm not much good at small talk and at no other time is this more evident than at this party. Tricia tried to coach me on the way.


"Talk to my Uncle Dennis about the food dehydrator you got from your kids at school," she suggested. "He used to have one too and talked about it all the time."


She's worse at small talk than I am and I wasn't too sure why she felt a need to offer help given that the one person at that party that I was usually pretty good at talking to was her Uncle Dennis. We generally talked about vacation plans and running. It was perhaps the only two things we really had in common but we could talk endlessly about both topics.


As we walked into the party the room fell silent and all those strange faces turned to stare at us making our entrance. Only five seconds in and it was already awkward. This would prove to the be the high water mark for the night as things only went downhill from there. I started by seeking out Dennis. I figured I should start strong and move on to the others from there. Unfortunately our conversation didn't go as planned. Someone else I didn't know too well was part of the conversation too and I didn't feel comfortable talking about running for fear of leaving him out. I wanted to talk about vacations but they were just finishing up a conversation on this topic as I made my way over. I was baffled. What to do?


"So," I said. "I got a dehydrator from my kids at school for Christmas!"


"A what?" he said.


"A dehydrator," I repeated.


"What's that?" the other guy asked.


"You mean a dehumidifier?" Dennis asked.


I stammered.


"It dries your food out," I explained. "You know, it takes all the water out."


"Why would you want to do that?" the other guy asked. It wasn't the type of question that made you feel as though he really wanted to learn more about the subject but, rather, that he wondered what in the hell was wrong with you. As if you making this all up.


"It's to help preserve the food for hiking and backpacking," I explained. "You dehydrate it, pack it up, and then rehydrate it on the trail."


"Oh," they both said, simultaneously. They both looked around uncomfortably and walked away.


I stood there for a moment playing with the food on my snack plate. Tricia and her parents were talking with someone else across the room. I was tempted to join them and take comfort in numbers. Around this time Tricia's cousin Michael walked by to freshen up the snack table. He and I have had just a handful of conversations over the past fourteen or fifteen years. We have little in common and he's not all that talkative anyway. Still, I felt I needed to try. I had to prove to myself that I was capable of this simple social skill.

"Hey Mike," I said.  

Doh, I thought. He goes by Michael you idiot!
 
I saw that there was a book on his television titled The Elf on the Shelf. I knew of this book from school and had a funny antecdote concerning a conversation I had with my kids about it. I shared it with him and he said nothing. He didn't even offer up a chuckle. It was a good antecdote too. But still he didn't smirk.


"Yeah, well...I oughta be finding Tricia I guess," I said.


"Alright," he answered and turned away to return to the kitchen.


I was 0 for 2. My ability to make small talk didn't much improve from there. I later found myself in conversation with another teacher but we had an entire discussion where I don't think either of us really understood what the other was trying to say. Later I talked with a lady who took great interest in everything I had to say. She's known for this. In fact, she takes so much interest in what you have to say that you almost feel uncomfortable. She leans in real close, has a perpetual smile, and never breaks eye contact. Ever.

She really liked that the kids had spent time backpacking last summer.


"Now they will know how to fend for themselves and find food if they're ever lost in the woods," she commented.


She was serious. I didn't break it to her that backpacking was more about high tech cook pots and fuel canisters than berry gathering or squirrel hunting. She wanted to know about the bears, too. I may have disappointed her when letting on that we hadn't seen any bears but we had seen a  lot of snails.

"Tons of them!" I assured her.


The only highlight of my ability to make small talk was when I later told of our encounter with the parking meter for Tricia's sister and brother-in-law. They laughed and laughed. I suddenly felt like a bad poker player. The one who stays in to the bitter end of every hand and only to lose nine times out of ten. Why, then, does he stay in so often? Because he remembers that ONE TIME when he pulled the perfect card and won. Tricia's sister and brother-in-law are my perfect cards. They keep me wanting to try again.


So there it is. More stories than I could ever write about.

A Tough Crowd

A number of weeks ago our school faculty got together to listen to a small collection of inquiry project presentations from our early childhood student interns. Each of the four student-teachers took a turn sharing with us what they had worked on during the past semester- building community, conflict resolution, etc - and how it turned out for them. Afterward, they invited questions and comments from the teachers.

I mostly sat and listened. That is, until one of our fourth grade teachers decided to share a quote that he felt had some connection to the project being shared. It evidently was a humorous quote. Or at least it was intended to be because when he finished, and everyone in the room sat silently, he exclaimed, "That was funny!"

"Oh, is that how your finishing your jokes now?" I asked, "by telling us 'That was funny?'"

He laughed.

"Is this something you find you need to say after a lot of your jokes? Because if it is you might want to stop telling them," I said, further rubbing it in.

Jokes are like that, though. Sometimes people find them funny. Sometimes they don't. And sometimes they're just flat out put off by them.

I once had a meteorology professor that started our first day of class with the following two jokes:

"How does Kurt Cobain collect his thoughts?"
"...with a mop."

"Did you see the flight plan Bob Richards turned in for his last flight?"
(he drew a line gradually lifting up from the ground then then nosediving straight back down)

Both jokes were about people who had recently died. Kurt Cobain committed suicide by shooting himself in the head and local meteorologist Bob Richards, also committing suicide, drove his plane into the ground to escape the growing rumors about his supposed affair.

Neither man was necessarily a model citizen but I didn't like the fact that this teacher was making fun of thier deaths; none-the-less, on our very first day of class together. Perhaps there are some types of jokes you reserve for friends, or at least close acquaintances. I would think jokes about death would fall into this category.

My dad used to tell all kinds of really bad jokes. He enjoyed them whether they made you laugh or not. And he didn't shy away from making fun of the fact that people had died. One of his favorites was "Do you want to see my impersonation of John Wayne?" He would then fold his arms across his chest and close his eyes as though he were lying in a casket. He had a similar impersonation of Elvis, but with a snarled lip.

Neither impersonation was all that funny but I doubt anyone was ever offended. Sometimes people didn't even get it. They'd stare at him and wonder what in the hell he was doing. "So go ahead," they'd suggest.

Some of my own jokes are like this. I definitely inherited my sense of humor from my dad because most of my jokes aren't funny either but I still enjoy telling them. Every once in a while, though, I'll tell a joke and be disappointed no one else found it as humorous as I did - if for no other reason than to share a laugh.

This happened a few nights ago. Tricia, the kids, and I were at a holiday party saying our goodbyes before heading out the door. I stopped by to wish our friends, Tim and Heidi, a happy holiday when Heidi leaned in and quietly mentioned that she had something to give me before I left.

"Head back to the bathroom," she said. "I also have something I want to talk to you about."

The bathroom? I was  pretty sure I must have heard that wrong. Still, I walked back toward the bedroom where all the coats and bags were being kept. Once I entered the bedroom, with Heidi right behind me, I looked back over my shoulder and she looked as though she was waiting for me to continue. So, taking a chance of thoroughly embarrassing myself, I hung a right and walked into the bathroom. And sure enough, she followed me in!

So there we were standing together in someone else's bathroom. It was pretty big with a nice green marble tub and all. But still, if you wanted to sit down it'd have to be on the toilet because it was the only seat.

As if things weren't weird enough Tim showed up. He just walked right in too. Like he was expecting to see us there. If they weren't both so nice I would have suspected that maybe I was about to get beat up or something. "You lure him into the bathroom," Tim might suggest, "and I'll be right behind you to jump him!"

But he didn't. Instead Heidi handed me a gift bag and, unsure whether she wanted me to open it then or wait, I pulled out the Christmas card and commented on the great picture of their boys in Hawaii. Heidi then proceeded to talk about the book she's writing for Heinemann (a big-time publisher of texts for teachers and educators) and some of the issues she's having with how it will be written.

She suggested that she, Tim, and I think on these issues over the break and get back together to discuss it after the holidays. These are the types of discussions and I love and, without doubt, the fact that she would even think to include me in this task is tremendously flattering. Yet I still couldn't get over the fact that we were hanging out in the bathroom together. And that they seemed so at ease as though they had had many important talks in other people's bathrooms.

As we wrapped up the conversation and made tentative plans to meet again in a few weeks I suggested "That sounds great. But next time let's meet in YOUR bathroom."

Two blank faces stared right back at me. Evidently they hadn't spent the past five minutes thinking about that bathroom. Evidently they didn't find this to be even remotely funny - a fact I couldn't stop talking about on the drive home.

"Seriously," I pleaded to Tricia. "I was making light of the fact we were standing around exchanging gifts and having a professional conversation in the very same room that our principal uses to flush her system - and yet nothing."

And then it hit me. I forgot to tell them.

"That was funny."

Toughing Out the Cold

 

 Sun rising over the middle school football field outside our classroom window.

(as captured by Maxwell)

Last Wednesday, as we walked in to school from the van, Ainsley looked up and said "Wow, look at the clouds!" I had noticed them too on the drive in. They were tightly grouped together in small mounds across the sky, looking very much like the moguls you see skiers hopping over in the Winter Olympics. In the distance we could see the sun just beginning to rise above the treeline. 

About an hour later my students had made their way into our classroom and were spread about the room playing chess, reading books, and searching the internet for news articles to share. I was working to decorate a CD cover with a small group of kids when Maxwell came over.

"Mr. Hass, did you see the sky?" he asked.

"Yeah, it's beautiful," I responded.

"Could I get the camera and climb out the window to take a  picture of it?" he asked.

I really wish our classroom had a door because we do quite a lot of climbing in and out of that window. While I've never been told specifically NOT to let the kids crawl out of it, I can't imagine it's encouraged.

"Sure," I said. 

I didn't really expect the photo to turn out. I imagined, if anything, it would be washed out by the sunlight. However, after school I pulled out the camera to see what pictures the kids had taken over the course of the day and I was amazed by the beauty of that first shot. A professional photographer could not have captured it any better.

Later in the day, after working to write songs and make sense of fractions, we cleaned up for recess. Kayla asked if she could bring the camera out and snap some shots of the kids playing and of the ice that sometimes collected here and there. I gave her the green light, most of us grabbed a jacket, and we headed out.

It was cold. There was a day when I would differentiate between "cold" and "South Carolina cold." In St. Louis we had long, long stretches where the high temperature would stay below twenty degrees. It was not uncommon to see the mercury drop below 0 a few times over the course of a winter. So when we moved to South Carolina and saw people bundling up as soon as the temperatures dropped into the low fifties we couldn't help but laugh.

They just seemed to overreact to the slightest change in temperature. At the threat of  snow flurries there would be rumors that school might be canceled. In fact, there were times in those first few years here where school was canceled due to the threat of flurries. Oh, and morning temperatures in the twenties.

In St. Louis I remember taking my class out to recess everyday unless it was raining or the temperatures were sub-zero. Part of this was due to my great hatred of indoor recess. But another reason for going out every day was that as long as you dressed appropriately you were never really all that miserable. Especially when you ran around and played rather than standing in one place to shiver and gripe. 

I had the right clothes, too. I loaded up with a wool vest, cotton coat, and windbreaker jacket. Added to that was a neck gator, stocking hat, and really big mittens outfitted with a wind and moisture blocking sleeve. Throw in a second pair of socks and leather hiking boots and I was sweating bullets until I finally hit the door.

I've noticed, though, that I'm not so careful to dress appropriately now that I live in the south. I still wear shorts a day or two each week and sometimes only come out to recess equipped with a hoodie jacket.  There's ice on the ground and in the pond - a fact that just amazes my students - and it's cold.                                                        

I shake. And shiver. And put my hands in my pocket and gripe to myself.

Why is it soooo cold?

It was seventy degrees like a week and a half ago!

Seriously, I didn't move south to freeze to death. This is ridiculous!

I have a partner in all this. Another teacher who is out to recess with us each day is originally from Texas. He pulls his hood around his face so tight that you can barely see any skin in there at all. He shifts from one foot to the other moaning and complaining. I tell him of the old days when I would have not worn a jacket at all. And the time I braved a port-a-potty toilet seat in 8-degree weather. And the time I ran a half-marathon in a 4-degree snow storm!

But those are all memories now. I no longer laugh at the locals because I've become one of them. Now the new northern transplants can enjoy a good laugh at me. I'm alright with that. 

I know their day will come soon enough.