The force awakens -- at 5 am

Sleep has suddenly become hard to come by in the house; the boys are wild and wired at night, and L starts waking up at 11 and then every 1-2 hours from 2 am onward. She'll go back down usually until 6, but this morning she was awake by 5. I took her downstairs, but somehow O had heard her stirring and decided to join us; needless to say it was cranky-pants time this evening, but for the morning there was some cute playtime between the two younger kids while Z dutifully stayed in bed until a practically evening 5:45 am. I missed snapping a photo of the true Jedi action where L actually had her lightsaber up in a nice parry a minute prior to this shot, but still super cute.

With a summertime birthday (and apparently no kid in his class with an actual birthday this week), it was Z's turn to be the 'star student' this week. As with kindergarten, he got to fill out a giant poster about his favorite things -- and I was impressed with just how little prompting he needed to complete it. A few examples:

• These are the members of my family: Mom + Dad + elle + O + Z = everyone.
• When I grow up I would like to be Super Man
• I am a star because... I help people silly
• These are a few of my favorite things!
  • Color: blue
  • Animal: fox
  • Food: goldfish [Ed note: truth.]
  • Sport: socer [Ed note: O RLY?]
  • Thing to do in school: work
  • Thing to do at home: draw

Also as part of "star student" week, a parent can come in and work with the class -- talk about their job, read a book, etc. Z had a big smile when I came into the classroom, and once I'd told the class a bit about my job, all of the first graders were somewhat manically interested in asking questions (e.g. talking about their favorite video games and asking if I'd worked on them). My very favorite part was afterwards, when I got to escort the kids down to lunch and sit in the mildly deafening lunchroom (initiating flashbacks of my own school lunches) and have lunch with Z. It was pretty special for both of us to pull out our lunch bags (yes, I packed my own) and sit and eat together. The other students were great as well, it was fun to see how the class all helps each other out and more than a few seemed to be good friends with Z. After lunch, the students head outside for recess -- I don't think Z even looked back, but I did wave goodbye to him on the playground before heading to work. When I came home, I saw his daily school journal entry, and may possibly have cried.

Near sighted

O's class pictures were Thursday, and he was arguably more excited than we were about the big day. Without a word or cue from me, he picked out his own ensemble and came downstairs in the morning looking quite dapper, ready for his pictures. "Wow, I look very good today!" And he knows it. This spells trouble I suspect.

In other news, L continues to be pretty much in love with her brothers, with many smiles and giggles as she watches them and as they all play together.

Today the boys and I had an early guys' movie morning, allegedly at a "sensory-friendly" screening where they would turn down the volume and turn up the lights just a bit. When I bought the tickets, I double checked we had the right screening, and the staff at the ticket counter first had a blank look and then nodded and said "yes, that's the [mumble] screening". As far as I could tell, it turned out to just be a regular showing, but the boys loved every minute of it and did a great job of quietly watching the movie and mowing through an oversized bag of popcorn. Afterwards, there was a giant version of Baymax in the lobby, and Z confirmed for himself that the robot was indeed as huggable as had been depicted in the movie.

Poetry reading

Z loves to write, spell, fill in the blanks, work with bananagram tiles, read, and come up with creative sentences. He loves doing the portions of his "table work" (homework) that involve words, interestingly strongly preferring them over math (though he does well with arithmetic as well). When there isn't school work to do, he will often fill pieces of paper with words or sentences. This has occasionally generated what I can only really describe as poetry; an excellent sampling from yesterday: "One night I dreamed above the moon. I see your favorite day because I love you. It was a busy day of writing."

This past week I took a trip to LA to speak at a few conferences (and while in town, I was also thankfully able to stop off and replenish our tea supply in addition to meetings and catching up with some friends). I returned home just in time to help greet friend M arriving from the east coast, who after many years of threatening to visit finally found the right combination of airfares and schedule -- yay! We've been having a lovely time; she's become an immediate favorite with all three of the kids, and it's been great to catch up with her and also show her some of the boys' favorite stomping grounds.

School daze

And just like that, summer break is over and everyone is back to school. Today was a day of many firsts: Z's first day of first grade (he was happy to see the bus again, and the same bus driver to boot!). It was O's first day of preschool. (He was initially shy at dropoff, but after he and I hung out for a bit, he saw several familiar faces from last year, and was nearly immediately off and running). This was also my first day back at work after an amazing parental leave (which remains one of my favorite benefits at my employer) - I presume I'll be digging out from the e-mail backlog probably through early 2015. It was also Meh's first formal day as a stay at home mom. And L of course had her first day wearing yet another fabulous outfit, including an excellent jean jacket.

It was also practically the first time I've gotten the three kids actually posed in frame of the same picture - and kind of even in focus. We'll still have to work on them actually, you know, all looking at the camera or even (gasp) all simultaneously smiling. Or even somehow assembling all of us in front of the camera short of getting some kind of portrait professional. But hey, it's a start!

Getting with the programs

Today both boys had their school class orientations - and both went to each other's, which made things extra interesting. First it was Z's class, which he's been talking about for most of the summer -- though since camp has ended, he's appended "and then we'll go to camp next summer" to the schedule following school. There had been no e-mailed announcement of his teachers or classmates, and sure enough when we got to the school there were lists printed everywhere of all of the kids and their class assignments -- working through the crowds to find Z's name in small courier font was an instant flashback to my own grade school. But from there we got to his class and saw a few familiar names from his kindergarten class, and got to meet his teacher, who seemed both very nice, had an exciting classroom of organizational materials for Z to comment on, and mentioned she recognized Z from when the kindergarten and first grade classes had crossed paths. He's very excited to be heading back to school on Tuesday; earlier this week we got a message from his former bus driver that she'll still be doing the route, so that'll be a nice familiar and friendly face as well!

And then we visited O's upcoming classroom; alas, it was at the height of rush hour traffic, so L had a sad time in the car on the long stop-and-go drive down. But once we arrived, everyone was happy, and O pretty much pulled us into his new classroom; we recognized two familiar names in the class roster, and O has been talking about other kids in his class that he knows from last year's playground activities. Got to meet both new teachers, who were super nice, as well as a few other parents. Besides constructing another couple of block towers of terror (alongside A, one of his two classmates from the prior year), O was particularly excited to be sharing a classroom with Alice, a large turtle in an aquarium in the corner of the room. Z in the mean time was a big fan of the classroom's tree-themed corner loft (filled with pillows, shelves of books, and dangling decorative stars, clumps of paper "leaves", and actual stick "branches".

We celebrated the nearing end of summer with a concluding family dinner at the boys' favorite local sushi-go-round; L smiled, chattered, and raspberried at everyone while the boys enjoyed alarming numbers of plates of cucumber rolls, gyoza, and edamame.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Several months ago when Meh asked Z what kind of birthday cake he wanted, he answered "a Wizard of Oz cake!" Challenge accepted, and I think fairly exceeded, by mommy with today's seventh (!) birthday party for Mr. Z. There was an impressive amount of preparation, capped off with the completion of a stunning yellow brick road to the Emerald City cake (complete with sugar paste silhouettes of Dorothy and her friends!). Paired with slipper cookies (both ruby and silver per the movie versus book), scarecrow diplomas (wafer tube cookies wrapped in rainbow candy ribbon), tin man hats (Hershey's kisses), upside down cupcakes squashing wicked witches, rainbow cupcakes, lollipop guild lollipops, and much more (including what Z now expects of all birthday parties: pizza), the spread was a solid success. Many of the kids did the Glinda bubble wand craft projects (made with awesome Meh-sourced beads and colorful pipe cleaners) too. The location was declared by Z to be a winner as well, featuring his favorite park's playgrounds, swings, sand area, and "forest" of rhododendrons to wander through -- all of the kid attendees had an excellent time as well. Even L cooed and squeaked her way through the affair, sporting another lovely new party dress. Several of Z's kindergarten friends came too, and it was fun to get to meet some of the kids he'd talked about all year long. The afternoon was capped off with some recognizable aircraft from the previous day doing their repeat Seafair performances in the distance.

I could try to describe in more detail, but pictures are worth a thousand blog posts, and a whole set from the party can be found here - happy (observed) birthday, Zachary!

Double Play

The boys continue to have a fun if exhausting time while mommy and L traverse Bulgaria (and appear live on national morning TV and even a cooking show airing in another month or two apparently?!). O's early afternoon park tour has continued this week, even despite the weather finally backing off from the unusually warm; on Tuesday, O was insistent that we find a park with a water feature even though it was overcast and in the 60s; here's a shot of him enjoying the spray hoses for, oh, about five seconds before asking for his towel. From there we reverted to a more standard park, where he and I had a delightful time (re-)discovering the joys of whirlybird maple seeds.

Thursday was O's teacher M's last day of class before moving to Arizona - she's been a fabulous teacher and the two of them have been so close, we'll miss her! She left a very cute goodbye note for all of the parents at the sign-out sheet, and she also made a custom card for each of the kids featuring a picture of them with her and a very sweet and child-specific note. We wish her the very best in her next advenutre! After school (and before camp was over), the rain was coming down, so O and I headed over to the trendy Seattle combination indoor play area/restaurant. While he was a bit shy and made me climb around in tubes and tunnels clearly meant for 4-6 year olds, we had a great time and then a very civilized nice snack together before looping back to Mercer Island to pick up Z.

Z for his part has been continuing to love camp and has really developed a solid friendship with his counselor E; as so many of his teachers are women, it's great to see him having a guy role model and talking about both E and camp, having big smiles as he's dropped off (and picked up), and overall clearly enjoying every minute of his days at Camp Kef! Z even shares at bath time some of the songs he's been learning ("boker tov" means good morning in Hebrew):

Caught in a binder

Seemingly every weekend we're back at the boys' favorite park. Thankfully this time L and mommy were able to join us, and the boys were very cute about checking in with her as she smiled and cooed on the blanket (in between snacks for all and her nap time). My main concern with the upcoming birthday party is that every time we're back, another part of the park appears to have broken -- a few weeks ago, a climbing apparatus had caution tape on it; last week, a rocking horse was gone and replaced with a construction cone; and today, one of the two infant swings was just totally gone from the frame. O of course has been full of questions as to why the play structures are gone and who removed them/put up the construction signs. Z in the meantime is insistent that "they're going to fix it!" Here's hoping the city has got budget allocated for repairs!

The weekend has also been featuring ever-warming weather, so we were able to have some dining al fresco opportunities. Mima and papa came over for a grilling good time; the boys were very happy to enjoy the newly added woodchips in the background (unanticipated bonus: they apparently repel more of the insects!), push each other in the swings, and step from stump to stump by the house. L in the meantime was very happy to be outside with the family, smiling big smiles at everyone.

Tonight was O's end of the year class picnic; friend J actually took him and classmate A over to it at a fun park near their school, and I joined up soon after work, finding the entire class crazily climbing all over the playground. Soon enough we were able to herd the kids back to the picnic shelter for dinner, cake, and a small ceremony where each of the kids' parents received their "documentation", a giant binder featuring printouts of the year's activities. In addition to art from the kids, these had involved a full series of excellent nearly daily e-mailed documents that had captured the kids' activities over time, generally richly accompanied with pictures and ridiculously cute quotes from the individual kids on their thoughts about the concept or activity. It's amazing to have such a rich capture of O's life between the ages of 3 and 4, and leafing through the early entries it's wonderful to see just how much he's grown. The kids were off for more post-sugar wildness, running around the park with a few kites, before I eventually coaxed O back into the car and home, happy and exhausted, for bath and bedtime. Even though school continues through the summer, congratulations on a rough equivalent to "graduation", Mister O!

OMG TRUCKS!!1!#@!

The promotions and warnings had been coming for weeks, but today was finally Truck Day at O's preschool -- and it did not disappoint. Ambulance, Seahawks truck, SWAT team truck (O popped his head out the top hatch), and many more. The drivers were all fun too, clearly super proud of their vehicles; the cement mixer guy had a bunch of toys and even a Xeroxed coloring book that he'd had growing up in the 1950s!

Meh braved the entire morning with L in tow, bringing yummy baked goods as thank you's for the many truckers, and first helping O's class and then volunteering with other parents later in the day.

When asked which was his favorite for today's class documentation e-mail, O commented: "The fire truck, because I liked it."

Everything is awesome

O and his school friends have been continuing to try to find opportunities to play outside of school, which has been wonderful to see. He and friend A have playdates frequently on Friday afternoons, and friends M and A have either booked, or expressed interest in booking, future playdates too. When I speak to their parents, they mention their daughters have also apparently started declaring their intent to marry O. When I ask O, he always insists he's going to marry friend J instead. Oh, those pre-school love triangles. Anyway, friend J proactively invited us for dinner last night while I was picking up O -- while I correctly presumed his parents didn't actually know about the invite (and I politely declined), we did go ahead and make plans for today at their house for playing and watching the Lego Movie. Of course, Meh and I were enjoying the bits and pieces we could see (in between interacting with the boys, fetching snacks, negotiating toy sharing, changing L, etc.) more than Z and O were, so into the Netflix queue it goes!

While L was conked out on Meh's shoulder, we noticed that she even sleeps daintily -- notice the extended pinky.

Electronic report card

Grandma and J's visit wrapped up nicely, and they're back in Michigan -- soon to head to New York to meet their other new grandchild! We all had such a nice time and were sad to see them go. Z said it best: "we'll definitely see them another time". The boys have been wearing their new grandma and J-gifted Cars pajamas nearly constantly too. Other than that, it's just been back to our regular schedule around here.

Today I received an interesting e-mail -- it was a hyperlink to O's "report card" for his recently completed set of swimming classes. Because he takes lessons at his preschool, I've only gotten to see him swimming once, so it was super cool that they actually provide some documentation. And it was actually a very nicely formatted web page, with quotes from the teacher interspersed with photos, which I of course scraped for our own archival purposes. O will be continuing his lessons next quarter, as well as adding an additional class in "gymnastics", which he insists is "like 'nastics', but with 'gym'". Mrow?

Hallmark moments

O has been getting into the act of writing thank you notes for his many birthday presents -- and he's liked doing it so much that he's started to want to thank people and give them gifts for no apparent reason at all. Yesterday he informed Meh and myself that he wanted to give a thank you present to one of his school friends "for saving the whole class" (perhaps when they were role-playing?), and he proceeded to make a card for her with his name on it and a picture of "the beanstalk from Mickey" (he saw this short film a month or two ago). Then when we were at the store, he really wanted to get her a present. I wasn't quite sure how to handle a present for a single person in the class, but one of his teachers helped us through the adorable exchange this morning, where O and M went out into the hall, O gave her the present (he seemed as nervous and excited as if he was receiving the gift) and she was super happy to have received both the card and the cute little elephant. Nice job O!

For his part, Z has been watching O working on thank you cards, and suddenly I think he decided he wanted in on the action as well. Today while cleaning the play room, Meh found an adorable card he had quietly made for his school teacher -- and when I picked him up from his after school program, he had just finished coloring an oversized card for one of his school aides as well. We'll put them in his folder tomorrow to take to school; it's great to see such spontaneous and relevant giving from both of our sons!

Third fourth birthday

Happy *official* birthday to O! He had a busy and action-packed day. We gave him his birthday presents: an excellent ukulele from Uncle B and Aunt J, which he was performing on almost immediately, though he wasn't quite patient enough for me to show him how to hold and care for it, so we may have to work into that a bit; cars from grandma and John, and a car carrying case from us -- partially with the hope that this will be the beginning of instituting a rule to limit the vehicles in the house to those he can actually travel with. Then his friend J (and his parents R and G) came over to both welcome L and celebrate with O; J and he did this through a combination of running, jumping, giggling, wrestling, and loud talking.

Mima and papa had graciously invited us over for a birthday dinner (O: "and presents?"); alas, things went a bit south when he and I went to go pick up papa from work and O completely conked out -- I couldn't get him awake again throughout the birthday dinner, so mima and papa's lovely preparations were mostly enjoyed by O's parents and brother. Naturally when we got back in the car to go home, he woke up and was completely confused and upset that he'd missed cake and presents. Fear not, mima had packed up a piece, and when we got home, he had a late last celebration, complete with cake and the opening of his two last presents (shock of shocks, they were cars).

Yesterday was his school birthday party; after dropping him off in the morning with supplies for his birthday class "activity" (Froot Loops and landyard gimp to make necklaces), I arrived back for their lunch and saw this poster on their classroom door. When I walked in, a few kids had necklaces already around their necks and others had clearly already eaten theirs -- but it was still fun to get to see O interact with his class, and of course we all sang a raucous chorus of happy birthday. Afterwards, O posed with two of his best friends and his birthday poster for the school's daily documentation -- so cute! Oh, and his birthday necklace? Green and blue Froot Loops only, of course.

Once more, a very happy and busy fourth birthday to O!

For patron use only

I forgot to mention that when we got home from the hospital, I noticed a sign taped up outside of the downstairs bathroom door; when we went upstairs to give the boys their bath, there was another one outside of that door. Z has been making signs for a while (occasionally I'll see them in the front or rear window of the house), but while he and O were with Mima waiting for us to return to the hospital, he apparently decided to start labelling the restrooms. The stick figures smiling on the toilet are my favorite part by far. This morning, another similar sign showed up just outside the master bathroom -- way to be thorough, Z!

O returned to school yesterday, and his sister was the talk of the class -- I spied them working on a giant greeting card for her, but it wasn't quite ready to bring home. Today when I went to pick him up, first the entire class seemed to say "awwww..." with disappointment that I hadn't brought L with me -- soon kids, just give her more than 2.5 days! But they presented us with the finished card, featuring a bold "Welcome to the World Baby Eleanor! (Tiny)" cover, and opening to display color drawings from most of his classmates, annotated by the teachers with what the students said they meant or were thinking about. Super cuteness all around; a sampling:

• Dear baby Eleanor, Are you coming to see us? I am making you letters!
• Dear Eleanor, I drawed you a race track. You are special because you are a baby.
• Dear Eleanor, I drawed you Smog's Mountain. I want you to learn to talk. You are cute! [Clearly this came from the kid who got O interested in The Hobbit, right up until we started to try to read a few pages...]
• She looks so cute. I drew a bed.
• I have a baby brother too! I drew sleepy eyes.
• I'm good at drawing arrows. We will see you soon!
• Dear Eleanor, I drawed you a tooth fairy.
• Eleanor, This is a slide. I love you.

And from her brother, the note read: "Eleanor, I think you will like it. I love you. I hope this card is going to be cool to you. Love, Owen"

When mima came to visit today, she brought a sampling of pictures of Meh from her own first few days -- there's certainly a resemblance, though L also reminds us both of what O looked like. As far as the crying from Meh's picture, we haven't been seeing too much of that except that L doesn't appear to like getting her diaper changed. Here O helped try to sing her through it:

Timetable

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).

A grand day out with O

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!

Classroom Etiquette

When Meh dropped off O today at school, she made the mistake of loitering in the classroom to jot down the names of his classmates for his upcoming birthday party. O noticed this and said "You're disturbing the class mommy. You need to leave now."

We had a lovely rest of our visit with Grandma and J, with trips to the park, meals at some of the boys' favorite restaurants, and even a rare date night for Meh and myself, returning to the Italian place we used to go to when we were first dating. The boys are of course huge fans of Grandma and J, and Z has already been talking about how "we'll definitely see them another time -- after Tiny comes!"