week ending dec 30, 2007:

Week ending Dec 30, 2007: The kids are enjoying all their loot. They got so much stuff that much of it has only been used once or twice although they play only with new toys. This week I noticed the gender discrepancy in the toys. Alex got mostly toys that let him build things and send things flying, and Chloe got mostly dolls and toys that require her to invent an imaginary world. Those are exactly the kinds of toys that they asked for, but I worry that Chloe is getting short changed and that she will feel disadvantaged (as I did) when she gets into the “real world” and has to start building things. In college I was much less confident about picking up tools and trying to fix things than my male peers and I always figured it was because of lack of experience on my part. If, as a child, my friends and teachers and family had presented building and fixing things as something equally expected of girls and boys, I think I would have been better prepared. Or maybe I wouldn’t have been interested. Who knows?

Since this is the last KTW of the year I felt obligated for a “year in review” kind of entry, but I’m really not into it. I always review their year shortly before their birthday and doing it again would just feel redundant. What I have been thinking about is that with the passing of Great PopPop, an era in my life has ended. The story I’m about to tell isn’t about the kids at all, but some people have pointed out to me that this journal provides a historical record for the kids to look back on later, so I was thinking about history. When I was growing up, my grandfather and 5 of his sisters all lived on the same street. His parents owned a big piece of land and the land was parceled out in ½ half acre lots to many of the siblings who each built homes on the lots, and the street was named Half Acre Drive. When we’d visit for Xmas, we’d visit with my grandmother and grandfather, and then we’d walk from house to house and visit with each of my Great Aunts who lived on the street and then we’d see even more extended family “up home” which was what everyone called the big house where they grew up. At one time the big house faced the highway, but as the area became more commercial and property taxes went up, the family sold the lot that faced the highway and physically moved the big house further down Half Acre Drive, away from the highway. The walls in the big house were never quite straight and I always liked trying to imagine the house being moved and the walls bending. Anyway, none of the original Half Acre Drive folks live there anymore, and PopPop was the last of those 6 siblings to pass away. I always thought it was pretty unusual for family members to live on the same street like that until I met Casey and learned that a few members of his father’s family have built homes on their family land. Anyway, that doesn’t seem to be a tradition that our generation will be inheriting except as a memory.

I wish everyone a happy and safe New Year with lots of happy memories of this and other years past!