better half

mary is the world's greatest mommy. and dead sexy. and a splendid american.
i couldnt have done what she done with that boy and his bike. and not just on account
of my length. i would have been less heroically patient than mary, more content to just butt heads with
elias over our shared frustration, which wouldnt have been a good strategy owing to
him's wearin one o' them helmet hats. when mary first started taking them both out with training wheels and she on her feet,
she would wear a helmet too, to set a good example. that's called superlative parenting, boys and girls.
three cheers for my wife, america. seriously, put your hands together.

Riding his bike

My little man can ride a bike. Well, as long as we are going straight. If we are stopping, starting or turning he needs a little bit of help but all the important stuff he can do alone. Learning to ride a bike has been pretty difficult. Mostly because there is no one to hire to teach him how to ride a bike. Swimming was one of my first challenges but that is why they invented swimming teachers and now thanks to Lisa, Elias is an excellent swimmer. Biking is different. Parents teach kids to ride bikes and unfortuanetely Tristan is tall which leaves me running around the block every day with Elias who only recently decided he enjoyed the process. For several weeks Elias insisted that he was too young to ride a bike and he tried to reassure me that when he was ten he would be ready. This did not seem right to me so around and around the block we went. A few days ago it was like something clicked. I let go and I kept letting go. He was riding, admittedly it was some crazy curving erratic riding, but he was riding all by himself. He started going at a pretty good clip and I was running next to him weaving from the left to the right side of the road to be next to him in case he needed me to grab on. He turned right and I didn't hold on and he kept going faster and faster. So now I am sprinting to keep up and I am so excited and all this adrenalin is rushing through my body and what does Elias do? He turns his head and of course turns the handlebars at the same time to look at me. I grabbed the back of the bike and somehow managed to stop both of us without anybody landing on the cement. Instead of being terrified Elias said "I was riding by myself!!!!" And now, my little man likes to ride his bike.

lunch-gun

sophia likes horsey rides. piggybacks she can take or leave, but she loves a grown up crawling on all fours. she might like the falling off better than the riding. she is the slowest eater i've ever seen, and i've seen some slow ones. maybe she's allergic to hot food. maybe she's just making a statement about the extent to which she intends to let hedonism guide her young life, as in,
--why should i hurry, what else am i supposed to be doing right now?
but seriously, she takes hours for lunch. that is so un-american. she need to take that stuff to paris. sophia in paris sounds rather sensible, in fact.

A rock the size of me

My sister in law once told me a Turkish phrase that translates to something like "may a rock the size of you fall on your head one day". I am sure that I got it all wrong, but what it means is the ago old adage, you reap what you sow. Sophia is my rock and she is at least as mischievous as I was.

The other day I was in the backyard while our neighbors visited. The neighbors are a little bit older then Elias and Sophia and therefore they seem immensely cool. The neighbor who is closest in age to my kids is also named Aedan which earns him even more points for sharing their uncle's name. I listened and watched as the kids played and eventually had the joy of hearing Sophia say this:
"Ok Aedan you be the prince and I be the princess.....But we don't have to kiss...Unless you want to kiss"
I have a feeling this is only the beginning. She might be a boulder.

taste the happy

cybele has finally started to grow out of some of her clothes. i thought she never would. for a little while there she
was acting as if she would reject babyfood henceforth, makeing a clean break with it. then she decided that she still needed/wanted it, at least her favorite kinds. but she is also a generally adventurous eater of all fingerable foods. her profound delight in extending her arm fully and proudly dropping her foods on the floor attenuates the amount of food that she is allowed to feed to herself. she has developed some impressive climbing moves that even her unlce donaldmike would be pleased with, including maneuvers that could only be characterized as 'gambits', as in, if she doesnt get this hold, she will bite it, face first. but if she gets the hold, ooohhhh, can't you just taste the freedom? now she is rocking on the rocking horse...by standing up on the saddle.

Riding the bus

The other day, Cybele and I chaperoned Sophia's class trip to see Winnie the Pooh at Clowes Hall. All the kids love Cybele and I am not sure if it is because they love babies or if there is something especially wonderful about Cybele. I am leaning towards Cybele being the baby of the world and therefore everyone loves her appropriately, but I am admittedly biased. The first thing about going on a class trip is riding the bus. The school bus is not yellow and big. It is small and green. It is awesome and it is what led us to the Children's House in the first place. Cybele of course loved it too. She got to ride in the front seat and she was way up high. Cybele could see everything and she frequently said woooow. Her sense of awe overshadowed my excitement of being in the bus for the first time, but only by a little. Once we reached the venue the excitement peaked. There were hundreds of kids and grownups in costumes. Cybele was interested for about a minute. As the program ran Cybele ran. Back and forth in front of the kids between me and Sophia's teacher. Laughing, falling and being adored with each lap.

sick-day

my poor boy-o has a sore eye, the conjunky-virus. he was disappointed to be told that there could be no school today. now we have the challenge of finding fun things to do instead. my preference is for connect 4. because i am a champion of connect 4.
i am rapidly transmitting my excellent knowledge and superiority to elias, so that he too may pursue the heights of quadrilineal connectedness. he is making fine progress.
so far it's been a little harry pottering around and a lot of hovercraft crafting and winged jetpack construction. elias has told me he wants night vision goggles. he did not know they actually existed, and it was like magic to him when i told him that he had not in fact made them up. i'm sure the u.s. military can spare a pair.
he has been working on his skills in the kitchen recently, particularly his knife skills, under close supervision.
his claw technique coming along quite nicely. i shall build der uber-chef.

Dairy Queen, Dairy Queen, Dairy Queen!

Soccer is almost over and it has been a good season. Elias is on Team Austria and he plays games every Wednesday against Team Brazil. Tristan thought it was a done deal that Brazil would win every game because apparently Brazil always wins. Brazil has won every game, but we're not going to worry about that. Soccer when you are six is basically a whole bunch of kids running around with the ball somewhere in the middle of all of them. Someone always gets knocked over and sometimes the ball goes in the wrong goal, but they all seem to like it. Maybe its just the shin guards. Elias has been pretty good at running after the ball with the rest of his team and even helped score a goal (I think it was for his team). Recently the coaches started having the kids block the goal. Elias learned this trick from his Papa.

After the games we tend to go to La Maragarita for Elias' favorite dinner of tacos with a side of chicken fingers. Elias calls the restaraunt Lo Margaritas and I am not about to correct him. Then we finish off our Wednesday night with the classic post soccer treat. Dairy Queen, Dairy Queen, Dairy Queen!