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This picture was taken tonight, from the doorway to the lounge in our dorm. We have our piano in there, and a whole bunch of our musical instruments (as well as lots of outdoor toys). It is very common to find a student playing the piano — and almost just as common to have Owen sit down on the bench with them for a nice long stretch of time.

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By far the question I get the most — when people find out that we are living on campus — is, “So, what’s it like for your kids?” Or, “how have your kids reacted to it?” Or something along those lines. People seem genuinely curious about the experience of raising kids on campus. I wish I had huge chunks of time to blog about this, because I too find it to be a sort of fascinating topic. I mean, really, what happens when you put young kids on a college campus that has historically not had kids living on it?

What I’ve thought about so much is the importance of just letting it happen, and the importance of sharing our kids. It would be so easy to keep a very tight reign (and we oftentimes need to; obviously there are times on campus and places on campus when we have to be extra diligent about our kids’ interactions and whereabouts). The challenge is to just let go a little and let our kids bond — independently of us — with students. When we let go and share, amazing things happen.

What we’ve seen in the past year is the ability for people to connect and bond and build relationships — even 8/9 year old people (or 4/5 year old people) with 19/20/21/22-year old people. In fact, I think there is a specialness about the relationships that these two age groups can form. Younger kids are craving feeling truly connected to older/cooler/hipper people (who are not their relatives, parents, or their parents’ friends). And college aged kids are craving feeling truly connected too. We are all just trying to find our way in the world, and our place in it. We all like feeling connected. And sometimes it is just very satisfying to bond with someone very different from yourself.

Kyle, Owen, and Meera are the only kids living at Lehigh. They are very well known on campus, and they have lots of very real relationships with lots of very amazing students. They get a lot out of all of these relationships. And vice-versa; I can see that the bambinos also have a huge impact on the students they connect with. I don’t know where all of this will lead, what impact it will have on the bambinos, or how this will play out in the long run. All I know is that right now I am confident that it is something special and something good.

It is hard to capture any of this in photos. Because it feels like I’d be infringing on something if I were to try to snap a picture. So, most often, we don’t take pictures of our kids interacting with students. But sometimes we quickly grab a snapshot (often with our iPhones in order to make it feel less invasive and more ‘normal’ — taking photos with phones is, after all, part of the daily status quo of life on campus).

After the piano session, they switched to African Drumming.

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Our 2013-2014 Head Gryphon, Jon, is an astounding, incredible, absolutely wonderful guy that we have been quickly getting to know. Above: Jon has his door decorated with Meera’s artwork. Below: Jon has added a second basketball net in the hallway (adding on to the one we already had over the lounge door) — so he’s created a mini basketball court in the hall… where he, Kyle, Owen, and many other residents, have already spent hours and hours and hours playing Hall BBall.

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Above: Sayre Lawn, at dusk, a few nights ago. Meera has slews of the female residents wrapped around her little finger. Here she was leading them in some sort of elaborate chase/tag/hide-and-seek game. Below: Meera at Rathbone Dining Hall. She’s become well-known for her ice cream creations for dessert. She catches many students’ attention with her absolute unselfconscious delight in eating ice cream. I observe so many college-aged young women coo over her and watch with wonder as they see a 5-year-old eating happily without counting calories or worrying about fat grams. I think it should be a requirement that every college dining hall have healthy little girls eating in them… just as a reminder of what healthy body image, and healthy eating, looks like. On a campus that is just teeming with eating disorders, it is good to have a Meera around. And Meera just loves the dining hall! (You can see why! ICE CREAM FOR DESSERT!!!)

Below: Meera on the Slip-n-Slide on the Sayre Lawn (not afraid to put on her bikini after eating that ice cream!).

Below: Another piano scene. I took the picture from outside the building, looking in.

Well, the first week is behind us! Phew. We had a great first week of school (best best best ever! for all five of us!). I can’t imagine the bambinos being any happier. (And I am loving the photos sent to us of our kids at school!) Now we’ll try to settle into some semblance of rhythm and routine.

(photos courtesy The Swain School)

Photos courtesy of The Swain School’s online photo gallery (these must have been taken by Meera’s teacher at recess)

Two 3rd Graders & a Kindergartener!

A new year! A new school!

Uniforms!!! Who woulda thunk it?!?!!!! (So far, I gotta admit: I love ’em!)

Kyle, Owen, and Meera started school today at The Swain School. This school is more in our neck of the woods — since we made the home-move a year ago, it was time to make the school-move too. But the bigger reason we chose to make the move to Swain is that over the past couple of years we had become convinced that Kyle and Owen (especially), and Meera too, would greatly benefit from a more rich and dynamic school environment. Swain is a better fit for our family right now. It is more diverse, more academically progressive, and more able to support — in every way — our three young whippersnappers as they rise up in this world! This trio needs a lot to keep them busy! Swain has a lot to offer. We are so happy with this move (it has been a long time coming!), and we are so excited for an awesome school year!

In all of our years of living here — so close to the Delaware River — we’ve never spent time on the river. Which is just bizarre, considering how water-loving our family is. So, when mid-way through the summer Shelli & Lori invited us to go tubing on the Delaware over Labor Day Weekend, we jumped on it. Sunday was the big day. It was an absolute blast!

We had quite the crew on the river! Lori, Shelli, and Zoe, us, and Henry, Bryan, and Sean. Let me repeat: It was an absolute blast!!!

An awesome day to officially put the bookend on summer!

We’ve been home for two weeks. It has been a strange sort of “limbo” time — with work really gearing up for me (classes started at Lehigh last week), and work going at full tilt for Braydon, but school still not begun for Kyle, Owen, and Meera. We pieced the two weeks together, Braydon and I took turns covering the home-front, and we had some help from student babysitters at Lehigh, but what really made these past two weeks a wonderful ending to our summer (as opposed to would could have easily been an absolutely terribly disastrous and miserable ending to the summer) was Ryan.

Ryan has been a huge person in our family life for the past two years. She was the bambinos’ full-time babysitter for Summer 2011 (click here), and she’s been helping us raise our kids ever since. Somehow she always seems to breeze right in, take control, and make everything seem manageable at precisely the times when our life is most out of control (mainly, summers and school vacation weeks). Ryan is more than a “babysitter” for us– she’s like an extension of our family; more like a trusted auntie than a childcare provider. We could not be more grateful.

These past two weeks Ryan took over a few large chunks of days for us, coming up with fabulous stuff to do with the kids. It was just enough to make the whole two-week-period feel like a breezy end to summer (when it could have easily been, as I said, a nightmare). We J-Ms fondly referred to these past two weeks as “The Camp of Ryan.” Ryan took them hiking, she took them to parks, she took them to the zoo. She took them bowling. She baked cupcakes with them. She even did some school-prep (math) with the boys to get them ready for 3rd grade. It was like a wonderful bookend to the best summer ever. Thanks to Ryan.

Tonight was the kick-off concert for Lehigh’s four a cappella groups. There’s just nothing like college a cappella!

These are the sorts of things that we try not to miss on campus. Last year Meera was too young to stay up so late. This year, all five of us made it. Such a great way to spend a Saturday night!

our first student event of the 2013-2014 academic year

Late this afternoon we had 50+ Eckardt Scholars over for a Welcome/Welcome-Back Mocktail Party. It was a great event to kick-off the year. Thank goodness for:

• Jeanne, my Right-Hand-Woman (our Eckart Scholars Program administrative coordinator, from the Office of Interdisciplinary Programs) who makes all of my visions reality.
• LU Catering, who make these events possible for me to pull off — and who make it delish for some very appreciative students! (I like to spoil the Eckardt Scholars with all sorts of treats… today’s menu included: sushi, crab cakes, bruschetta, spring rolls, fresh fruit, yummy alcohol-free sangria… and many other fabulous items too!)
• The students. They are, truly, just so incredibly incredible. I just love them.

By living on campus I can easily do these sorts of events at our home. The students feel like they are being invited to a professor’s house (which they are), and that makes it much more personal and special than if I were to hold it in an event space. They can also get to/from the event very easily (we are right on campus, so no car necessary). I can pull it off without having to worry too much about the bambinos (Kyle, Owen, and Meera all join right in… and honestly, add a lot of life to any party!). And our dear friends from LU Catering just swoop in to set it up, and then clean it up. After a quick run of the vacuum and a wipe-off of all the surfaces, everything is right back in shape (so our entire day/night is not consumed with hosting an event).

The bambinos are happy (they are eating pizza and watching a movie right now), the students are happy (the Eckardt students and the Sayre students [who, by the way, always benefit by getting all the leftovers from our events!]), and Braydon and me are happy (we’re high-fiving each other feeling like we’ve somehow managed to pull off yet another day of the dual-career-&-3-kids marriage). It is all good as we wrap up the First Week of Classes and head into the new year.

For several weeks now Meera has been talking to me about wanting to get a haircut. She told me, repeatedly, that she wanted it short. It was hard for me to believe it (her long hair has always been such a huge part of her identity). But she was pretty insistent. And she was also clear that she wanted to do it before the first day of kindergarten. With a lump in my throat and a pit in my stomach I brought her to the hair salon today. She explained to her hair stylist exactly what she wanted. I just stood back (as hard as it was to do) and let it all happen. My only request was that Meera’s hair be given to Locks of Love. Meera is so happy with her haircut. She’s also so happy for whoever the little girl is out there who will someday be wearing a wig of hair that matches Meera’s (“We’ll be just like twins!” she said, many times, as I watched her long ponytail get cut right off). Oh my aching heart!