There's Snow Place Like Home





After I was home from my half-day at work on Christmas Eve, and after hot sandwiches and soup, and after suiting up into my neglected winter coat, hat, and gloves, and suiting Rhiannon up in her purple coat, pink, tassled hat, pink "mitties", and knee-high, tassled snowboots, we went outside to frolic in the snow.


We are currently wintering at my in-laws' house, just north of Chicago, and there are three feet of snow on the ground, about half of it fresh from the past week. Rhiannon and I both miss it, and miss it with feeling, and snow is something one sees on TV in Phoenix -- it's two hours' drive by car to see it in person in Arizona from where we live. So the first thing Rhiannon does (as she has always done with the first snow she sees for the year) is sit down in the middle of the back yard with a plastic ladle from the kitchen and eat. She eats snow for minutes, making her mouth and nose pink. She loves it. No sugar. No flavor. Just crunchy, white snow. She offers me some, and I take a taste. It tastes like I remember it. Clean and cold. And it brings into focus the fact that I am Outside which is a place I need to be (and R, too) more often than I have been this past year. For me, the snow tastes like mana. For Rhiannon, I think it is more literal for her. So we sit and eat until Rhiannon wants to make snowmen.


I say "snowmen" (in the plural) because she wants to make a gigantic one that can be seen from space, but she also wants to make a tiny one as we have a box of accoutrements suitable for a foot-tall snowman: tiny, black felt hat, tiny pipe, tiny carrot nose, tiny, black eyes, tiny, red scarf. We find tiny sticks for arms. Rhiannon and I make three snowballs and stack them atop each other on the birdbath that has frozen over. We dress the snowman. I have to create an armature to keep the snowballs from falling over, and then he is done. When we see him from the window later, he is listing, as if having dipped too frequently into the Christmas cheer. And on Chritmas morning, he is completely toppled over; perhaps the squirrels rolled him for his nuts.


The other snowman Rhiannon and I build ends up not looking like a snowman at all, but like a six-and-a-half-foot tall Nordic fertility symbol comprised of about ten snowballs of decreasing diameter. The whole erection must weigh about one hundred pounds, and Rhiannon insisted on me photographing her kissing this totem pole; it is a picture you'll not be seeing here.


And after all of this, Rhiannon has me give her a push on the swing, and has me watch her as she slides down the snow-covered slide, and then we pitch snowballs at each other until Rhiannon ducks at exactly the wrong time and gets a faceful of powder. Tears follow but quickly stop as I let her dump handfuls of snow over my head and down my shirt. Satisfied and laughing, we head inside. As we walk to the backdoor, Rhiannon tells me of her immediate plans:


"Dad!"


"Yes, Rhiannon?"


"I'm going to have hot chocolate!"


"Sure!"


"And you're going to have a hot cup-o'-joe!"


[pause]


"That means 'coffee', dad!"


"Yes, Rhiannon." I laugh. "Yes it does."


And once inside, we make good on her plans, and then go upstairs to play.


Rhiannon. Cozily Cute.


Andrew (Papa)

Ballet with Butterfly Wings


My brother is lovely. He's hairy, too. But he's lovely just the same. And he's especially lovely because he treated Rhiannon to her first ballet, a professional performance of The Nutcracker at the Phoenix Symphony Hall, the matinée show on Sunday, the Ides of December, where Caesar might have been stabbed 32 times by an icicle had the conspirators not waited so long and Rome had actually been in the Alps. Ah, history. But I digress.

We had great seats: Row 26 in the orhestra, stage right. We could see everything perfectly (but Rhiannon insisted on looking at the dancers' heads through our binoculars). The accoustics were grand, the dancers flawless, atheletic, and full of grace, the symphony pitch-perfect, the audience young.

Rhiannon took ballet class for a semester when she was three but got kicked out for...um...wanting to dance. Her teacher was a militant 15yo. Now, I'm all for discipline, but 3yo kids should be allowed to play and be encouraged to dance and express themselves so that when they are older, they do not become jaded, 15yo tyrants who think they are North Korean gymnastics coaches. But I digress.

Rhiannon was amped to go. We bought her a new, black velvet dress with silver sparkles. She wore her white tights and black shoes with silver and pearls. Around her neck she through a pink velvet cape, and on her head a silver (plastic) tiara. I took her for a haircut the day before, and she had a bath and everything. In the South, she would have been called a debutante, albeit about ten years' too early for that rite of passage. She looked gorgeous, and she insisted on carrying herself in a regal manner, speaking in clipped sentences with an affected English accent. That is how all princesses talk, you know.

So off we went, and when we arrived, much to Rhiannon's horror, we saw hundreds of girls, ages three and up, ALL dressed like something out of Cinderella's Ball, an entire auditorium full of cute, blond things speaking in clipped sentences with English accents. As parents, we all laughed and let the girls go do their thing.

Fifteen minutes prior to curtain, we were all treated to the story of the Nutcracker as dramatically interpreted by a local television newswoman. to her left was seated a real-live ballerina, one of the Sugarplum Fairies. The kids were quiet and listened, but all the little eyes were on the dancer. When the story concluded, Rhiannon pushed her way through the crowds of adoring children in order to give the ballerina a hug. The dancer was surprised and smiled, and then it was time to find our seats.

At the front of the stage was a large screen upon which was displayed a projection of snowflakes on a blue backdrop. Rhiannon thought she was in a rather posh movie theater, and was amazed when I pointed to the conductor and told her that there was an entire orchestra in the pit. The overture started, and Rhiannon watched the baton move up and down, and bobbed along to the music.

For those of you whom are fuzzy with what happens when in this ballet, Act I features the Christmas party where the eccentric uncle gifts his niece, Clara, the nutcracker, after which she falls asleep downstairs on the couch and awakens in the midst of a fight between the armies of good and the evil army of King Rat. The first half of the first act did drag a bit, and five minutes into the performance, Rhiannon turns to me and loudly whispers:

"DAD!"

"Yes, Rhiannon?"

"When do they talk?"

"They don't talk, Rhiannon. This is a ballet."

"NO! This is a PLAY!"

"Well, kind of. But instead of talking, the people tell the story with dance."

"Oh."

And Rhiannon temporarily settled into a long, winter's nap. But her interest was aroused again by the battle against King Rat, played by a dancer wearing an enormous rat costume with an enormous butt and glowing, red, electric eyes. The death scene included lots of flops and spasms and arms akimbo. Then the lights came up and we rose for intermission.

After dosing Rhiannon with candy (she had refused to eat anything earlier in the day and I had brought hard candy in case we had coughing fits), we returned to our seats for Act II which is much better suited to children (and parents) with short attention spans. Act II features lots and lots of dancing in two- and four-minute chunks by dancers in fantastical imaginings of what Spanish (Rhiannon insisted they were Scottish dancers), Russian, and Chinese people actually wore at the time in which the Nutcracker was set (c. 1947...kidding).

Rhiannon sat on my lap for most of Act II, and at the end, with the Ice King and Ice Queen are finishing their dance, and all of the other dancers come into the scene, and the music reaches the crescendo of the entire performance, Rhiannon starts waving her arms as if in religious ecstasy, nearly smacking the old woman next to me in the face. I half expect Rhiannon to be shouting "Hallelujah!", but instead she is singing in her falsetto voice (but not sotto voce) as loud as she can, in tune with the orchestra until the cymbals crash and the timpanis sound and then it's dark again as we are returned to where Clara sleeps.

Rhiannon settles down then and watches as Clara awakens, nutcracker in her hands, and it's over and we are all clapping and Rhiannon is thrilled to see everyone come back out onto the stage to wave and bow.

Mom and I ask Rhiannon what she liked best about the show.

"I liked all the parts the best."

Pause.

"Can we go get pizza now?"

Rhiannon. First-position Cute.

Andrew (Papa)

Rhian-imation!

(Make sure your speakers are on, volume up, then push the play button.)



Rhiannon. Animatedly Cute.

Winter Wonderland?


Rhiannon had her first official I'm-singing-in-a-school-assembly gig this afternoon. It's the obligatory school choral concert for the winter season (we used to call is the Christmas Concert, but there you go). The gig was at five, so the parents who could get to the gym on time to support their kids were there; the place was packed.

Rhiannon's group (kindergarten/first grade) would be singing last, so we all sat through twenty-five minutes of the most adorable asynchronous, avant garde renditions of "Frosty the Snowman", "Winter Wonderland", something that must have been "Jingle Bell Rock", and a surprisingly good version of "Santa Baby" by the three-year-old early-learners' program. They grow up so fast!

As the kids were singing, I was wondering how many of the children singing "Winter Wonderland" here in Phoenix, Arizona, had actually played in snow, not to mention facing unafraid the plans that they made, and getting married by a faux Parson Brown. I mean, this isn't northeastern Arizona....

Anyway, Rhiannon's group literally stormed the stage, a thundering heard of five- and six-year olds. Rhiannon was front-row, center (not pictured above -- pictures forthcoming, patient readers), wearing a light-blue, velvet skirt, light-pink, velvet top, rainbow-colored tights, and pink, sparkly princess shoes. Her hair that her mother had neatly done this morning, was back to its natural, Christopher Walken state. Her ice-blue eyes beamed like halogens on a winter night in Reykjavik.

While the rest of her classmates were shuffling their feet waiting to be told to sing, Rhiannon was striking poses, throwing her hands in the air, blowing kisses, jumping up and down. She was channeling Miley Cyrus at a Jonas Brothers concert (or was it the other way around). And the kinds SANG. They raised their voices and the roof. You've probably heard it said that the enthusiasm and energy of kids who are five and six is the highest it's ever going to get; they all have hope and they haven't yet learned shame, or how to be cool. They just DO for the sake of DOING. And they love it.

So they sang three songs, all of which were new to me. And after each song ended, Rhiannon would jump up and down, shout "Whoooo!!!", take a bow, and kick, throwing mock karate poses like she was part of the Crazy 88s. I mean, what says "Merry Christmas" like a beating at the hands of Lucy Liu?

Anyway, the last song involved the kids crumpling up pieces of paper and at the very end they all pelted the audience -- snowball fight! Rhiannon jumped up and down some more, sang her heart out (per usual), and then it was cookie time and lemonade. Afterwards we drove around to look at Christmas lights, and then home for supper where Rhiannon, still high from the performance spent the better part of the evening running around.

Rhiannon loves the stage, not nervous at all. She loves to sing-a.

Rhiannon. Cute for the holidays.

Andrew (Papa)

Secrets and Lies


Rhiannon is at that magical age where truth becomes fiction and fiction, truth. Anything is possible to a five-year-old girl; anything can happen. And when it doesn't, by golly, she'll make something up.

What she doesn't realize is that from the perspective of a 36yo man who was once a five-year-old boy and told plenty of "stories" of his own, and then watched his little brother do the same thing and occasionally get away with it, is that I can tell truth from fiction. Well, with kids anyway. I'm still trying to figure out the government.

On Saturday night, we drove Rhiannon and her best friend Kwynn (from Toy Town) to downtown Tempe to watch fireworks and see the Christmas parade. On the way over, I hear whispers in the back seat of the Mazda. Now, the Mazda is a smallish car, and Rhiannon's voice carries, so pretty well anything she says in a hushed voice she might as well have screamed aloud. Here is the secret told by Rhiannon to Kwynn (and don't you dare tell her I told you):

"Kwynn! I need to tell you a secret."

Kwynn waits, expectantly.

"Emma said that Joe Jonas was over at her house and he asked her to marry him."

Okay. Back up. Joe Jonas is (I think) the middle Jonas Brother (pictured above). He must be, oh, fifteen or sixteen by now. Emma is five. I continue to listen....

"And then Joe Jonas came over to my house when my parents were asleep and he asked ME to marry him."

Wha???

"And then he said he wanted to marry YOU, too."

WHA??? Joe Jonas, I had no idea. Kwynn says nothing, but is giggling, kind of like a laughing tea kettle set to boil. I shake my head. At least we'll get a dowry.

Today, the stories continued as I drove Rhiannon to Little Gym.

"Dad!"

"Yes, Rhiannon?"

"I had fun a school today."

"Why?"

"We had an assembly and Sharpay was there!" (Sharpay is the obnoxious blond girl from High School Musical).

"Oh! So if I asked your teacher how they were able to have Sharpay come, would she tell me?"

"No, dad. It's a secret. Besides, Miss Mark wouldn't know the answer anyway."

And so it goes. Apparently she and Miss Mark went to Chili's for lunch a couple of weeks ago. And had volcano cake.

It could happen....

Rhiannon. Honestly cute.

Andrew (Papa)