9-year old solders TV-B-Gone kit

Completed Adafruit TV-B-Gone kit

I'm a proud grandpa today. The granddaughter did her most ambitious soldering project yet - a TV-B-Gone from Adafruit (see here, really it's cool) - which totals out at about 60 solders or so and took her 2 hours, with reading the instructions being the most time consuming part. She even had a couple of screwups she had to fix with the solder sucker, a task she performed without getting frustrated or giving up. For a nine-year old, I thought it was a pretty impressive feat of concentration. She placed every component and soldered all of it herself; she defiantly didn't want any more grownup assistance than absolutely necessary.

At one point I asked if she needed help. She replied exasperatedly, "I'm fine Grandpa, I've been doing this for a long time." And the funny thing is, she has - right about two years, anyway.

When we finished, we tested the device in my bedroom and the TV dutifully turned off. She screamed as though she were a 1961 teenybopper at a Beatles concert and danced and bounced on the bed in full, spasmodic ecstasy for nearly a full minute before we could calm her down. She wanted to share her achievement with my nonagenarian in-laws, who just moved in across the street a week or so ago, before taking it back to her mother, for whom she made it as a gift. Now that she sees it works, though, I think she kind of wants to keep it.

Or maybe we'll just have to make another one.

Facing middle age, or, procrastination on a rainy December day

On a rainy December day I enjoyed thinking back to our trip to Galveston this summer.

Not to mention our trip right after session to Mexico City:

 

 Not so nice here at the moment. We need the rain, but the gray weather's a bummer.

Trannsforming Tragedy

I wanted to share with readers a remarkable story that provides a happy coda to a dark, sad episode in Grits' personal family history: Readers may recall that two years ago (on Tuesday, to be exact) my 12-year old niece, Maggie Lee Henson, died after a tragic church bus accident and three anguished weeks lingering in an intensive care unit in Mississippi. Rather than rush to the state capitol to push for a new criminal statute named after their daughter, my brother and his wife instead designated Maggie's birthday, October 29, "Maggie Lee for Good" day, challenging those who knew and loved her and others whose lives she touched to perform one good deed on that day in her memory. Thousands responded, from small gestures to grand ones. In the Shreveport Times this week, her mother Jinny, shared stories of how the Maggie-Lee-for-Good movement became an unexpected blessing for their family during from the first 24 months after Maggie's death. On her blog this morning, Jinny (who is a Christian comedian by trade) linked to the Shreveport Times story and added these sobering thoughts:

While I would give anything to have her back, and hear that that feeling subsides little as the years go by, I know that we will always be a table with three legs.  As time goes by, you learn to put the heavy stuff on one corner and just where to place the chairs in case things topple, but these gymnastics only serve to remind you of what you lost.

Then again, at least I have a three-legged table while some people have no table at all. I am vastly aware of what I have left. August 2nd marks the one year anniversary of 6 Shreveport teenagers drowned while swimming, one mother losing three children on the same day. That is a pain I cannot fathom.

As we begin our third year of life without Maggie Lee, I have to be thankful for God’s sustaining grace, a loving family and the most unshakable friends in the world.

I was already thinking about Maggie and my brother's family a lot these last few weeks, so I wanted to both share the Shreveport Times story with y'all and publicly express my admiration for Jinny, John, and their son Jack. They each have weathered this terrible storm with remarkable courage and dignity, transforming grief into literally a constructive force. I couldn't be more proud of them for it.

Meeting Mommy's Boyfriend: A 3-year old's first trip to the Texas state fair

This weekend we took Mikel and Ty to the state fair in Dallas, and it was great to see a three year old get to experience that for the first time. Of course, spending so much time on the little kids' midway meant the adults didn't get to see the exhibits we might have chosen, but the little one had loads of fun.

On the drive to Dallas I kept telling Ty she would get to meet "Mommy's boyfriend," ribbing her mom to say she had a long-time crush on "Big Tex," the giant statute at the entrance to the Midway at Fair Park (pictured above). Since all over the fair Big Tex is used as an icon, this elicited cries of "that's mommy's boyfriend" every time she'd see an image of him. Mommy was tickled but a little mortified, which was of course the desired effect - I thought it was hilarious.

Of all the things she saw - from the carnival barker with no legs to a diver take an 80 foot plunge into a 10 foot pool of water (definitely a don't try this at home moment), what Ty loved most were the Midway rides she took with her Mom. It was all ridiculously cute. I've got a lot of fun memories from the state fair when I was a kid and I hope Ty will too when she's old enough to remember what will probably become annual pilgrimages, just like we did with her mom when she was still a youngster living at home.

3 Fun Outings in Austin, and a Baby's First Poem

I had three fun outings last weekend with the grandbaby, Ty, now almost 3, who was with me when her daycare was closed on Friday and then quite a bit over the weekend.

On Friday, she and I went to Zilker Park and Ty enjoyed the wonderful converted fire truck that they've transformed into a platform for slides and monkey bars. She also loved the huge statutes of seals, which are usually fountains, though she was disappointed that (thanks to Stage 2 drought restrictions) they had the water turned off. And as always, we spent a loooooong time on the swingset, where she would happily be swung as high as you can push her for as long as you're willing.

Quite a few other kids were there, maybe 9-10 or so, all supervised by Moms; I was the only man there with a child. One youngster turned out to be from our neighborhood; her mother recognized Ty from playing at a neighborhood park up the street.

After an hour or so on the playground, we got a (much anticipated) snow cone at the snack stand and purchased tickets to ride on the kiddie train, which Ty adored. She wanted to sit at the very front (in my lap) and waved to everyone remotely nearby as the train meandered through the park. (Later, recounting the story to Kathy, she told her she'd waved to her "friend with the guitar" as we rode along, by which she referred to a long-haired fellow who was playing the guitar by the tracks who waved back to her, smiling as we passed.)

Ty was thrilled when the train went through the tunnel at the very end of the trek, holding her breath and squeezing my neck as we went through, then announcing excitedly when we came out the other side, "It's not scary, I wasn't scared!" Throughout the rest of the weekend she kept bringing up that tunnel, which apparently made an impression on her.

After her Mom took Ty for the afternoon, she came back to spend the night with us, and the next morning after breakfast I took her to hear children's books read on the second floor of Book People's downtown Austin store. This was her first time there and the outing was a big hit.

The reader had chosen books about magic - one about a witch who turns her dog different colors, another about a little girl who uses a magic wand to create a menagerie of friends while alone in her room. Afterward, they passed out paper, crayons, and supplied tape and ribbon to create a "magic wand."

This was a clever trick. First the kids colored whatever they wanted all over the paper. Then you'd roll it up corner to corner, taping it together in the middle so that the coloring shows somewhat randomly on the outside. Then they twisted together one ed and tied on red and white ribbon, which gave the "wand" a pointy feel and a sense of magic as the far end whipped through the air. This cheap, homemade toy was the source of big fun for two solid days after the event.

Just as fun for Ty was running around underneath the bleachers that constitute Book People's little kiddie amphitheatre. She thought that was pretty cool.

On Sunday we had Ty while her Mom went to church (she's just a little too fidgety to sit through a worship service), so Kathy and I took her over to Rosewood Park hoping for a swim. Unfortunately, the main pool was closed (again, presumably because of drought), but surprisingly their lovely kiddie area had all nine fountains going full blast (they're designed for kids to splash and play, not as decoration). On what turned out to be a scalding hot day, that was the perfect way to cool off.

I'm glad Austin has some fun, cool places to take young kids.

A final baby story: Ty recited her first poem on Sunday, at one month shy of three years, I kid you not! :) It's from the wonderful "Book of Hours" - a book of translated Mexican poetry I frequently read to her by the painter Alfredo Castañeda. The one she honed in on (though she knows shreds of many of his other poems) is about Little Red Riding Hood. The short poem is illustrated by Castañeda with his wife's face in a red hood, with a menacing wolf's eyes and ears vaguely but recognizably imaged in her cape behind her. I can't make Blogger properly indent the last two lines, but the poem reads:

Is your fear like mine, friend wolf?
Mine is growing beneath my clothes
beneath my hair
beneath the color of my name

She recited it without prodding upon seeing the accompanying picture, which has always fascinated her (we've read these poems together over and over). I think it was that picture and her love of the Red Riding Hood story that made her latch on to these words, though admittedly they sound a little odd coming out of the mouth of a toddler. Perhaps somebody read her the story at daycare, but Ty has no books with the Red Riding Hood story in it and I've only ever told it to her subsequent to questions about this poem. Still, she knows the tale inside and out and it's a remarkably frequent reference for her.

I'm going to get a Red Riding Hood book next time we're at Book People for storytime, but I suspect Ty will always associate the story in some way with that picture and her first poem.