Z does love schedules. He generally knows the current date and day of the week. He enjoys talking about the most recent ("Happy Valentine's Day!"), upcoming ("O's birthday is next week!"), and far future ("We'll light the candles in December") holidays. He's also been fascinated with posted schedules at restaurants and other businesses, and I'll often see him write out faux signs with days of the week and their hours of operation -- sometimes even logical: "M 5:30-2:30" I think would work for a breakfast joint? And when I visited his class a few weeks ago, I saw they have a nice large-format schedule at the front of the room, which matched pretty precisely his own verbal enumeration of his day's school activities ("...and we're going to have recess... and then lunch... and then music..."). So it should perhaps come as little surprise that he made this drawing today:
I particularly dig the little drawings that accompany them - especially the "shushing" figure in the quiet time and the percussionist (or conductor?) for music. He's becoming quite an artist actually; here's another recent creation of his, where he retconned the "Wizard of Oz" to feature Dorothy and the Wicked Witch going off in the balloon while Toto and the Scarecrow look on:
I should add that he self-curates our refrigerator art exhibit; many mornings he'll decide to take down a particular work for a newer or rotating work -- sometimes even one by his brother, a true sign of his artistic integrity (or something).
J had been working with Z as a babysitter, a para-educator at his camp, and a therapy assistant much of last year. We haven't gotten to see much of her now that she's off to college, but last month she e-mailed asking if she could come take Z for a fun day out, and that day was today! They ended up going to the Pacific Science Center. When J arrived, Z got a big smile and said "J's going to take me to camp?"
The last few weeks have flown by, but did feature an excellent Valentine's Day, with a nice sign created by Z (featuring all of the, um, standard Valentine's Day romantic gifts; left to right: ice cream cone, heart, apple, candy, piece of chocolate, pasta) as well a fabulous themed breakfast by Meh (heart shaped sprinkles and chocolate chips on heart-shaped pancakes, naturally served on heart-shaped plates).
There was also an excellent bounce house birthday party for one of O's classmates -- though really I think Z had the more extensive fun, since O either got hungry or overwhelmed and was hiding in the lobby eating a snack for half the party.
On the plus side, both boys ended up eating pizza crusts (and Z even tried a full slice of onion- and pepper-covered) at the party, something I'd witnessed from Z but which was totally new to Meh. And O ate his cupcake's frosting while Z somehow ate only the underlying cake - complementary brothers, no?
While the east coast, Midwest, and southeast probably think Seattle's second approximately 1 inch snowfall of the season is adorable, it's a perfect amount for the boys -- we rolled out another even bigger snowman, and gave this one a scarf and (fireman?) hat, in addition to nose, mouth, and eyes, and then had some more fun backyard sledding yesterday. O's boots were at school and Z has outgrown his, so I pulled the knotted plastic bags trick from my childhood (though I feel like at the time they were usually worn inside of boots rather than outside).
Again, the snow was already melting by the afternoon, and was mostly gone by today.
I don't know how it happened, but somehow I completely missed the memo on a giant ferris wheel getting installed along the Seattle waterfront; when Meh mentioned it and I spotted it in a subsequent visit, I had no idea what was going on. Anyway, on a few recent trips into the city, the boys have pointed at it and excitedly asked about going to see it, so today it was time to finally play tourist and give the thing a whirl (oh, the puns!). We took the always popular bus and bus tunnel, and then walked down through the market, grabbing fresh donut holes on the way. O was very pleased to see they had some with green and blue Seahawks sprinkles! We arrived at the wheel, and after the gratuitous touristy picture in front of a green screen (later to be superimposed over the wheel for commemorative prints, t-shirts, mugs, etc.) and a short queue, we were on our way. The actual ride was quite nice, and the weather cooperated to give some excellent views of both the Puget Sound and the city.
After our ride wrapped up, we briefly visited the crazy carnival located in the same building, where both boys requested oversized gumballs. Clearly it was time to find some real lunch. We stumbled on the unexpected treasure of the new-ish restaurant at the Seattle Art Museum; a kids menu (with hot dogs [score one for Z] and grilled cheese w/ french fries [point for O]) and an awesome indoor play area with appropriately abstract vehicles made for a decent if somewhat disjoint lunch as the boys abandoned the table halfway through to go play. We don't spend nearly enough time showing the boys the city, but hopefully today was a move in the right direction!
I'm not entirely sure why, but I haven't gotten to spend a ton of solo time with O -- with his school on break today, we changed that! It was a full and very fun day, and fascinating to see how he acts differently when his brother and mommy aren't around. His hairdo has been getting a bit shaggy, so we started with a trip to the barber shop. I've finally trained myself that it's no longer a given that they'll have lollipops, so I actually brought one for him to have in the car on the tail end. He of course watched the beginning of his favorite movie during the trim, amusing the stylist. From there, we headed to lunch at a local kaiten sushi place near his swim lessons -- O looked at their logo and commented: "That sushi looks angry!". Then it was time for swim lessons! (Oddly, though school was out, the "pull out of class" swimming he does was still going.) He was right at home in the guys' locker room, and had to show me the whole pool area while we waited for class to start. Of course there were large oversized lego-things, and of course a car was constructed. He did great during his actual lesson; I hadn't seen in swim in forever:
After lessons wrapped up, we'd been planning to hang out with one of O's classmates for the afternoon -- another classmate joined us and we caravanned into town to go check out the Experience Music Project's expansive new Lego architecture exhibit. The kids loved it, and we had a good time as well -- in addition to the many impressive buildings rendered in blocks, they had a giant set of tables of random blocks to build from.
O built a (what else but) vehicle, while his friend J, always the Seahawks fan, built a giant blue and green pyramid. After more than an hour of intense lego building (you could leave your creations; they had put a bunch of them up on a center display table), we went up to the music-focused part of the museum. The kids had a great time banging on drums, singing into microphones, playing keyboards, and impressively holding up guitars and basses that were roughly their height and weight. We had a very loud and crowded jam session in one of the (thankfully for anyone else in the museum) soundproof rooms.
A full day complete, we dropped off the other kids and moms back on Mercer Island before heading onward to collect Z after school and collapse back at home. Hooray for quality O time!
