Maddie Wins at Swim Meet and Final Day of Baseball Season

Maddie's Choir Concert

Grossly Unprepared

I am the fourth of five boys. No sisters. Thus, Katie Hart is a mysterious wonder of female-ness. And now I have a pre-teen daughter beginning to exhibit similarly mysterious ways.

The most baffling part is the social drama. Who's in and who's out. Who's invited and who's uninvited. I sort of follow along but quickly find that I cannot identify what the concern is, only that there is a lot of it.

Trying to find common ground, I think back to my childhood. And I recall such social complexities as: I guess I'll football today. Who wants to play? Great. The entire social drama of my youth can be summed up with the question: Do you want to play football?

Sadly, Madeline finds this profoundly unhelpful.

Family Dance Party

I typed "The family dance party is" and then Maddie walked up behind me and auto-completed the sentence with "always a disaster."

I was going to be more positive. I generally enjoy the event. Last night the kids chose teams. Henry was odd child out as Maddie and Caleb paired up and assigned him to mom and dad's team. He was distraught. "But they can't dance!"

"You wanna bet?" Katie and I declared as we started busting our moves. The children looked on, incredulous. Finally, Henry said, "It looks like you're hurting yourself."

New Years in Luxor Photos

First of all, vacationing in Luxor was awesome. Please go! They need it. The resort was fantastic but it was sad to hear them talk about how they are usually sold out for New Year's Eve months in advance. Meanwhile, occupancy this last week was about ten percent. So I feel like I need to cheer lead for Luxor. Totally safe. Fresh air (as opposed to Cairo). Loved it.

Henry on the bank of the Nile

Queen Hatshepsut's temple

Tour guide gives us the scoop

Katie demonstrating her mad cap improv dance skills in front of Luxor temple

Taking advantage of resort sidewalks (a feature notoriously absent in Cairo)

Making alabaster items

Collosi of Memnon

Caleb welcomes you to Karnak Temple

Maddie inside Karnak Temple

In Which More Bragging (To Be Fair)

Also last week, Caleb advanced a belt in Tae Kwon Do to yellow with green stripe. In doing so, he memorized his third pumse in about five minutes. Good chance you don't know what that means, so I'll just tell you, it's impressive.

And Madeline won the dance contest at the super-birthday-party-dance-party (like father like daughter*).

* Groove is in the heart

Pillow Talk (Maddie)

She wanted to talk to me about her feelings. It was 11 pm and we both should have been long asleep. I was tired. But you have to take such moments when you can get them. So I laid down next to her and made some interesting discoveries.

She feels a lot of pressure being the oldest kid because what if she makes mistakes and then Caleb and Henry follow her example. So we talked through that.

Also, she keeps a picture of a map in her mind and adds different colors to parts she has visited. Florida is pink. Virginia is green. Egypt is brown.

And this (quoted as close as I can remember): "I found the scriptures open on your desk and I wondered why you kept reading them. So I started reading. The words were all weird and I didn't understand anything. But I felt really happy. I think that was God telling me I should believe in the scriptures."

The Madeline Dossier

Last I heard, Maddie wants to be a teacher. I say she was born for the fashion industry:

Heart Breaker and Heart Throb

Katie says Maddie's reading has exploded. This is good. For me, that didn't happen until I was 25, so she has an 18-year advantage on me, and I turned out all right.

Madeline has discovered self-consciousness. When we Skype, she looks at her image, not mine (of course, so do the boys, but they do it to make silly faces), and poses and brushes her hair. She wears lip gloss but not yet full make up, though I suspect it's coming. She has requested to have her ears pierced. Katie opposes. I support.

"It'll make her that much older," Katie explains.

True. Though that will happen regardless (per the above photo, I'd say it has already happened). My zen parenting philosophy is that the right time to address this or that right of passage or essential conversation, is whenever they ask about it. I suppose there are some obvious limits to this, but when they ask about where babies come from, regardless of their age, that means it's time to talk about where babies come from. And when Maddie requests to have her ears pierced, that means, by virtue of her asking, that she's old enough to have her ears pierced.

Powam, by Madeline Hart (age 7)

I will show my self wher I want to be
and then I will know what to do in my life
to see the world and peac of love
I will stand throu the life of me

She wrote this a few months ago, unprompted, uncoached. I love it.