Folktastic!

This is the third year we have attended the NorthWest Folklife Festival at Seattle Center, and the first when I think Naomi was really old enough to appreciate it. We left Dad and Muriel at home to increase our festival going efficiency (and to prevent having to leave for naptime). I had a feeling Naomi would appreciate some of the Asian dances (by which I mean, the costumes), so we stopped first at the Thai dance performance. The costumes were as beautiful as I had hoped, and the dancing was lovely (though- if you understand Thai music, such as it is, and can boil it down into a sentence or two- I am interested!). On the way to the next performance venue, we stopped to hear some shape note singing, which I have heard of but never witnessed. It was a "participatory event," but we didn't really participate. Neat.

The second dance venue we went to had Indian dancing, and we timed it perfectly to catch a dozen adorable (mostly white) girls in wonderful outfits performing two Bollywood dance numbers. So fun! I want to sign Naomi up for that right now. I thought after that, Naomi would be less interested in the classical Indian (grown-up) dances, but she loved those, too, and kept negotiating for a few more dances before we left to get lunch. We ate some food, wandered around, and even took a ride on the ferris wheel next to the Space Needle. Seattle-ish!

We were not the most adventurous eaters. In addition to the beignets we started off with, we had jerk chicken on a stick (me), hot dog (her), mango lemonade, and shishkaberries. Naomi pointed out a man in a skirt (kilt). She enjoyed the Scandanavian polka band (Swedish Pride!) and the ren-faire ladies handing out ye olde fliers. For my part, I wondered, can it really be true that one out of every three Seattle-ites is in a bluegrass band? And where do you get a washtub anyway?

It will be obvious from the pictures that our professional photog was not along on this event. Instead of beautiful and well-composed slice of life pictures, you get mom putting kid in ridiculous posed situational slice of cheese pictures. Oh well. It was a really fun day!

We got to the Seattle Center really early, about two hours before things got rolling. I wasn't that sure of the start time- I knew the performances started at 11:00, but I assumed (incorrectly) that at least "The Mighty O" (mini organic doughnuts, you may recall) would be open earlier. Wrong! Some places in the Center House were open, though, so we stopped for a pretend foot massage at this fifty cent foot massager (clearly not built for the shorter set- Naomi's feet were a good foot over the foot massaging metal plate). Shouldn't it be in the shape of a foot instead of a hand?
We also got steamed milk and beignets. Had to kick off the day with some unhealthy snack.
When I asked Naomi's favorite Thai dancer if we could get a picture with her, she was extremely gracious. I didn't give Naomi enough warning, though, so she wasn't sure how to handle it. We have since examined the picture many, many times.
Here, Naomi poses with young Zeus, who happened to be at the festival, all be-togaed and giving out samples of Greek yogurt.
After we got home, Naomi wanted to take some pictures. There is a weird close-up of my shirt that didn't come out perfectly, but she took a few cute ones. Muriel just said, Hey Naomi, do you like seafood? Good one, Muriel.

More on Goals, Plus Miscellany

I recently read an article about a study that looked at whether stating your goals publicly made you more or less likely to work toward and achieve them. The study found that going public with your goal made you feel like you were already on your way, and that goal seekers who didn't declare themselves didn't have that half-way there feeling, so they worked harder toward the goal. It was interesting to me, of course, because it has been and will continue to be a year of public goal setting. But my goals are small, and daily-ish, and accountability plays a big factor in this kind of habit-change goal-setting. I think the goals in the study were more about finishing law school and getting a good job, or something similar. I am not going to commit to anything like that in my new month resolutions...

On a slightly different note, I have read more than one article about how you should respond when people tell you about something difficult they are going through. One angle is that women tend to understand the importance of just listening and sympathizing, whereas men want to offer solutions to the situation. If this is true, I am definitely in touch with my masculine side, because I am all about offering unsolicited advice and trying (in my mind) to help create solutions. I think I have inherited a streak of overly-self-assured pragmatism, from my mom, her mom, even my dad's mom. This response, though, can mask the sympathy I genuinely feel. It seems like a lot of my friends are experiencing hard times right now- losses, illnesses, uncertainties. It makes me want to get better at just listening and showing I care without immediately forming a task force. Crap, now I have publicly declared my goal and am less likely to follow through...I am going to try, though.

Here's another public goal, related to the last paragraph- less complaining! I feel extremely lucky all the time, to have the friends and family and home and job and dog and so forth that I do. Good health. Health insurance. A well-stocked pantry (not now, but most of the time). A garage to park my reliable car in so I don't have to get soaked trying to get my kids out of their car seats. Car seats. Clean water that I don't have to walk miles for and carry in a big jug. A safe neighborhood. That bake-your-own pizza place three blocks away. Really, piles and piles of things go right in my life. So why do I complain so much? I'm locking it down. I know from endless work-related goal setting nonsense that I have to make my goal achievable, measurable, what was it... relevant? So I may have to frame this for myself a little more concretely. But I think I can get started without that.

On a completely unrelated note,

Bonus enrichments from Naomi's school experience:

Whacking herself on the face with an open palm over and over, in the world's most literal (though, not really funniest) manifestation of slapstick humor. Of course, Muriel also does it, always when there is food on her hands. Fun!

Derivative art. There is a girl in Naomi's class who draws really lovely flowers- lots of very uniform petals, always with a big swoopy rainbow in the sky above them. Now ALL of Naomi's art showcases flowers with a rainbow. In her defense, she does get a little Warholian with the image, making it small, making it big, putting it on the dresses of whatever princess she's drawing...

New vocabulary! I don't always feel like I'm the best mom I can be, that's for sure, but when Naomi came home from school saying that she "haked" something, I gave myself a hearty pat on the back. Because at the age of four, she wasn't familiar enough with the word "hate" to even say it properly when she finally learned it. Yea! Then of course I faced the dilemma of whether to correct her pronunciation. I hake it when my mom corrects my pronunciation.

Playing zombies. I can only imagine what this looks like on the playground, but at home it is just Naomi, saying "I am a zombeeeeee" in a not-quite-creepy-enough voice. Sadly, there is no walking with arms straight out (or is that only mummies who do that?), or twisty, sideways lurching like the zombies in the terrific movie, "Shaun of the Dead." She has passed this on to Muriel, though, so the other day they both had scarves draped over their heads, and were shuffling around saying "I am a zombeeee." Yes, I should have video-ed that instead of the twirling lesson. I know.

Finally, Mother's Day Recap

This year on Mother's Day, Jim left (in the morning) for a business trip to Minnesota, but not before racing to church to drop off my Sunday school lesson plans for whatever sub they could find, seeing as I had come down with some kind of pink eye-type thing the day before. Neat!

A few days before Mother's Day, I was grousing to my friend about how Jim sometimes relies on an offer in place of an action. Like saying, "I'll give you a foot rub," which is not the same thing as delivering a foot rub. The difference is subtle, but important, especially if you are the sort of person who always hears the silent escape plea in any offer. So when he said something late in the week before Mother's Day about me figuring out what I wanted to do on Saturday, just for me, or whatever, I was grumpy. I have to figure out my own treat! That does not count as forethought!

But of course I was completely mistaken. There was forethought, and planning, and secret keeping. Jim got Naomi out of school early on Friday, and they came home and baked me an apple pie. Not only was it delicious, it was beautiful (which my pies never seem to be). Jim said Naomi peeled the apples, and mixed everything up. Here is the evidence:




And here was another bit of fun over the weekend.

Happy Mother's Day!

To all my friends who are mothers, who will be mothers, who have mothers, and who mother others, love to you this Mother's Day!