Updates about my kids for friends and family who don't see them a lot and also some random thoughts.
Sunday, May 1, 2022
The Katie Chronicles, Nostalgia Edition
We are like a lot of households in that we transitioned to streaming movies and shows quite a while back. Even so, we have held onto quite a few DVDs from back in the day and continue to own players, even if we don’t use them much. I went through some DVDs this weekend and tried to pull out some I thought we could donate, if anywhere still takes them. I asked Katie to go through a pile of animated movies from her childhood, expecting to be given the green light to get rid of all of them, probably accompanied by an “I can’t believe I ever liked these,” too-cool eye roll. But I was wrong. I had no idea you can feel nostalgic for your childhood even when you’re still *in* your childhood. Katie went through the discs and reminisced with me about the ones she used to watch as a child, what her favorites were, which one scared her for reasons we don’t fully understand (Meet the Robinsons), and so on. As it turns out, she’s quite attached to several Barbie movies, Flushed Away, and the Shrek movies. The crown jewel in the 2010s nostalgia trip was The Sharpay Movie. Now there’s a name I haven’t thought of in many years. (Sharpay was a character in the High School Musical movies, if you missed the reference). When all the Despicable Me movies came up for discussion, it was my turn to wax nostalgic and I told her the story of how she used to ask to watch “Pickle Me” in her sweet little girl voice over and over. Ahh memories.
Monday, April 4, 2022
The Katie Chronicles: Future Grandchild Edition
After I got home from work, Katie and I were chatting about her first day of spring break and what she did. She said she found an article about names from around the world that mean “moon” and “love” and she wanted to read some of them to me. As she went to her room to get her phone and find the article, I tried to imagine the names that might be on the list. I kept coming up with names that were a little on the hippy side. Then time slowed down a little bit as I went forward about 15 years. I landed on a future vision where 30 year-old Katie was telling us she was having our first grandchild and she had chosen some name inspired by this article. I mentally scrolled through names I thought might be on this list and I was prepared to tell her I’d love little Moonbeam Twinklestar whether she has an unusual name or not. Then Katie found the article and started reading out names she liked. They were actually quite reasonable options: Myla, Jac