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).

Z's day out

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?

Frozen

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.

Big Wheel

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!

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!

Holding down the fort

Z's school has conferences all this week, so he's had short school days. Coupled with ongoing rain, that left Meh looking for extra entertaining indoor activities -- and out came the PVC pipes from the sukkah, which she reconfigured into this excellent fort! The boys had a great time with it, and Meh brought down everyone's pillows and bedding to make believe they were camping out -- alas, when enough of Z's sleeping materials made it downstairs, he suddenly got very concerned and sad. I'm not sure if he thought this was going to be his new bedroom or if there were just certain props that he only wants associated with his bedroom and sleep, but he wasn't okay with things until every last piece of the bedroom (both his and O's) were back in the bedroom. But overall they're so cute and happy with the fort, and were back in there playing back and forth with cars this morning!

Day tripper

We were so excited to hear a few months ago that friends E and A were getting married! Alas, the wedding timing was such that Meh wasn't going to be able to travel down to San Diego, and it was her now-rare work weekend as well, so I figured I'd be out as well. But the fares cooperated and mima graciously offered to watch the boys yesterday, so I took a solo trip down first thing yesterday and am flying back momentarily -- just a few minutes in the airport to, ahem, catch up the blog a little bit (it falls behind so quickly!) and check in on work.

After my required southern California grilled cheese pilgrimage, it was on to the wedding! In addition to the Seattle crowd, I got to hang out with childhood friend B and his wife R -- I kept forgetting that they're good friends with E and A, and it was great to see them again. The wedding was fabulous and so very "them"; everything from using Rhapsody in Blue as the processional music (played by E's childhood piano teacher), to stopping the presses immediately after the ceremony to turn the cameras around and take a picture of all of the attendees plus the wedding party, to an epic Jewish hora (where E had to rile up the band to have another go when they thought they were done!), to a well choreographed and very sweet first dance, and just a wonderfully festive evening overall. More pictures here.

There was even an after-party back in the hotel lobby; I finally threw in the towel a little after midnight. O's friend J was actually down here (his mom, friend K, and I actually did a Seattle a cappella trio performance for E's walk down the aisle) and was off to Legoland with his dad and grandparents as R and I headed back to the airport -- we'll be using them as a scouting party for our inevitable future trip to the home of everything that Z and O love!

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!"

For a very important date

I've been hearing bits and pieces from many of our friends scheming about it for months, but today at long last was Tiny's baby shower, an Alice in Wonderland-themed tea party! For my own part, all I could contribute was sneaking a tiara and clock into grandma's bag to be used in some way at the event. But it sounds like it was a fabulous affair, and the boys and I returned home to an alarming collection of pink things along with a custom-made Alice in Wonderland trivia quiz where I'd be lucky to score any correct at all. Meh reported that she was really overwhelmed by all of the creativity, thoughtfulness, and love of her friends and family; the pictures really say it all. The food and ingenious decorations all looked amazing, and Meh is already planning out how to incorporate many of the items into Tiny's "Alice in Wonderland"-themed room.

While the girls were at the shower, J and I took the boys to a local children's museum, where we met up with the spouses and kids of a few other shower attendees/planners. The kids had a superb time as always, though I think they ran J and me a little ragged. O got to show off his mad K'nex skills, working with me to build (what else but) a car, and Z had a great time mostly involving the large truck cab. The shower was still going when they shut the children's museum down, so we and the H boys headed onward to (where else but) Red Robin for dinner. Alas, there was a bit of a crash and burn on trying to get the boys' food order in first (it instead was forgotten, twice), but everyone I think had a nice if exhaustingly complete afternoon out.

Hello ladies

We finally picked up O's class pictures today (they were taken in *blush* November), and they did not disappoint. As grandma and J (who arrived today) would say, "What a rascal!"

If you're gonna build a time machine...

One of the fabulous presents Meh and the boys got me for my birthday was an official Lego Back to the Future DeLorean. Z was certainly interested in looking at the box, talking about the DeLorean, reading the license plate, helping pick out the dates it should go visit (our birthdays, Halloween, and also December to see the holiday lights) and eager for me to assemble it. And I don't think I was quite prepared for just how into it O was going to get. For the past ten days, he has spent probably at least 30 minutes a day demonstrating his excellent fine-motor skills (and patience, actually occasionally even sitting in a seat for minutes at a time!); I hunted down the specific parts we needed to put together, and then he did most of the actual assembly. We'll ignore for the moment that he was constantly asking if it was time to add the wheels, as that is his favorite part of any vehicle he makes. Thankfully we were able to overcome the fact that the box somehow came missing at least two parts -- Meh's giant canvas bag full of childhood Legos saved us with some appropriate size and color replacement parts. Anyway, all of this led to the completion of the DeLorean tonight! O was super excited to show it and drive it around, though being a Lego model, it's a bit on the fragile side and the gull wing doors kept popping off -- I'll probably take the completed creation to work in the next day or two for more permanent display. But super impressive, complete with rotating wheels to convert to hovermode, a tiny time control panel (with the destination date set to the invention/patent of Legos), Mr. Fusion, 2015 license plate, hood-mounted 1955 time control circuits, and more! Hooray for fun presents and good bonding time with Mister O and Mister Z!

And her little dog too

After O's school yesterday, Meh decided to introduce the boys to the MGM classic Wizard of Oz. (Z actually had a head start; as I mentioned, one of his favorite pinball machines at the museum on Saturday was the Wizard of Oz one; the spinning house and yellow bricks perhaps makes a bit more sense to him now.) Both boys were enthralled. O insists his favorite character is the witch, and he'll even do a little version of her evil laugh if you ask him. Z commented towards the end as Dorothy bids farewell to her Oz friends, "she's sad because she doesn't want to go home". It's been fabulous to hear them both singing the songs; Z's rendition of "We're Off to See the Wizard" is about as magical as a pair of ruby slippers -- I'll have to try to record it. To top it off, Meh has a copy of the original L. Frank Baum book -- we're going to start reading it to the boys, chapter by chapter, tonight! O already saw a few pictures and was wondering why they looked different than in the movie. I tried explaining that the pictures came first, but he was still concerned -- one challenge we have trying to read books to him with illustrations is that he'll immediately start asking questions about the pictures, even if the text would give him in the answer if he'd wait long enough to hear it!

Another ferry tale

Continuing to take advantage of Meh's newly freed weekends, today we all journeyed to Bainbridge Island. We had a bit of a slow start (and some routing challenges from the phone's turn-by-turn directions), but eventually made our way to the ferry terminal. The boys remain big fans of boat travel, and we even took them out onto the blustery upper deck for a few minutes before going back inside for a snack. Once on the island, we sought out their children's museum, and the moment we entered the door we knew we had a winner, with O and Z running over to both an electric car and a table full of wooden blocks. There were a number of faux "retail" stores inside as well - a grocery store, a restaurant, and a bank with an ATM. I wasn't quite sure if O was thinking heist as he grabbed a stash of play money, ran over to the electric car, and pretended to drive, but it was all super cute. The upstairs of the museum was even more fun, with a bunch of golf bar-driven physics games, a giant kid-controllable pneumatic/hydraulic dinosaur, and a big soapbox derby car that both boys somehow squeezed into.

The boys had fun for hours, only tearing themselves away when it was time to go find some food in the cute downtown area. We ended up eating at a bakery and listening to a street performer; it might have almost been relaxing if O hadn't insisted on climbing up and walk along the lip of a raised flower/tree bed. After our late lunch, it was time to return to the car and ride the boat once more back to Seattle, having a tasty snack and wrapping up a very nice if exhausting day on the island.

Pinball wizards

Today we all met up with friends R, M, and their son J (who is clearly among O's best friends at school) for an adventure into the city. Dropping the car at the park & ride near their house, we hopped the bus, crossed the bridge into the city, and got delivered via the giant bus tunnel to Seattle's excellent International District. There was a... park? Community center? Some kind of open outdoor area where there was a well-maintained ping pong table, and M and I had a few rallies with O and J. Then it was onward to Chinese food lunch with some new friends of R and M's who had just moved into the city. O actually tried some noodles; alas, it was a leisurely affair and at one point Z did fall apart and need a break outside. Anyway, after lunch, we walked another block to the fun (if mildly sensory-overloading) Seattle Pinball Museum, where admission got you all the free plays you could ever want of like 50 pinball machines. Z was in general more interested in watching than playing, but O had a few turns at some pinball games. Z's favorite was the one non-free-play machine in the museum (of course!), a nearly one-of-a-kind 2013 MGM Wizard of Oz table complete with a giant screen and miniature spinning Dorothy's house to shoot the pinball through, as well as a host of twinkling and shifting emerald and ruby lights -- he really does love holiday lights!

In the evening, the boys gave us an impromptu bathtub concert. (If you're wondering, Z's singing one of Meh's choral breathing exercises.)

Don't let the light go out

Z has been a huge fan of holiday light displays this year; there's a particularly large one on our route home where he'll frequently say "Look at all of those lights! Woahhhhh!" as we drive by. Many afternoons he'll ask when all of our neighbors' displays will be going on, and in evenings before we go upstairs at bedtime, he'll have to peek out the window one last time and talk about all of the lights. Last night, he was asking when the lights would be going on, and it was already pretty dark -- clearly some neighbors are on the ball and already taking down their Christmas lights. When I indicated this, he got worried and then teary-eyed, even though there were still a few viewing options to choose from. Holiday lights have also started to infiltrate his drawings, both on houses, trees, and the always favorite telephone poles.

Meh had the excellent idea to see if we could create our own local solution to this inevitable end of the holiday season, and today picked up (on super discount no less!) some white holiday lights with which to adorn the hidey hole. It was a huge success! Then we topped it off with a family dinner (after O's first day back at school - "that was a short day, mommy!") and a tour of the Bellevue Botanical Gardens' excellent annual Garden d'Lights. While the mist gradually turned into full-on rain and there was a long walk due to some construction in the gardens, the boys were happy with both the temporary exterior lighting and the beautiful interior displays, including animated lights for a "river", and both flowers, decorations, and a number of animals (Z spotted a monkey in a tree; O liked the snowman made completely of lights).

Dropping the ball

Happy new year! We had a nice low-key birthday brunch (and by low-key I mean only about a dozen kids plus their parents and our other friends) for me this morning; it was great to catch up with everyone. Yesterday we really needed to find a way for the boys to expend some energy despite the rain and cold weather, and nominated a local trampoline place where Z had previously gone to a birthday party (and allegedly just jumped around the entire time). The boys were both super pleased. Z stuck with the main jumping area; O tried the foam ball pit, though I'm not sure he quite caught on to the whole jumping in thing.
It was somewhere between hilarious and stressful to see the other kids in line waiting for him to squirm his way into and then back out of the foam blocks -- they were all very polite and tried to be patient, but O definitely backed up the queue with his attempts. Last night for the countdown, we went to friends R, M, and their son J's house; it was fascinating if somewhat exhausting to watch just how amped up O was to see his friend J after a little over a week off from school. They're thick as thieves and were tackling each other the whole evening. When the pile of boys neared Z, I saw him pick up a toy and duck away into the corner. All in all, the boys did a good job lasting until the ball dropped (thank goodness for time zone differences), and they even kind of sort of slept in a bit this morning.

Letter numbers

We're all very excited by Meh's new work schedule, which kicks in next week; currently she works every other weekend (including this one), but starting next year it's only one weekend a month! The boys and I have been passing the weekend with a number of different activities, but one of their favorites remains biking around at Z's school playground.


O is getting braver by the moment, and will pedal for minutes at a time all by himself. Z is still a little less certain, but does well when I help guide the handlebars a bit, and sometimes he'll even go off by himself. Uncle J came along today and Z did an awesome job biking around by himself between us.

Of course, biking can certainly help you work up an appetite; snack time on the playground is almost as popular as the bikes themselves.

One of Z's other favorite activities has been a renewed interest in the Bananagrams letter tiles. He's generally very insistent that the letters go the correct way, even for nearly symmetric ones like the S's -- so I was surprised the other day to see him placing I's sideways and E's upside down. Finally today I figured it out: he's using them as dashes and 3's. I's and O's also nicely double as 1's and 0's. It's always impressive to see the words and sentences that he's spelling; this one felt to me like some kind of sea shanty.

Movie palace

O stacked pretty much all of our embarrassingly large collection of toy cars on the piano today. I complimented him on the epic parking lot, but he declared that it wasn't a parking lot; he'd apparently had such a great time at the movies yesterday that he decided to make a movie theatre -- the cars on the piano were in the stadium-style seats, and they were all apparently watching "Frozen" projected on the wall behind the kids' little trampoline. Silly man.

In addition to setting up his diorama, we also took the boys to one of their favorite parks today. There's a giant boardwalk through the woods to get to a playground shaped like a castle, and Z kept talking about going through the forest "and then we'll go home". Great fun was had by all - hooray for holiday break family activities!

Reinforcing the cliché

Last night, we relived our own new tradition of driving around with mima and papa to view Christmas lights, finding no less than four excellent multimedia displays that featured radio broadcasts synchronized to their displays. The boys really enjoyed it, with Z frequently exclaiming, "Woahhhh... look at all those lights!"

How does a cliché become a cliché? Yes, the traditional observing of a movie and Chinese food was in force today. First we took the boys to a 10 am screening of Disney's newest film, where we met up with friends J and the H family. The previews were fairly extensive, though perhaps not all entirely age appropriate; the upcoming Maleficent was obviously a bit dark and had O asking why she had horns on her head -- though not if she was a "bad guy" (one of his new favorite phrases). The film itself was very fun and O was super entranced; he's been talking about the two princesses ever since. Z on the other hand had a bit of a hard time sitting still, getting the giggles at one point and then a bit upset (unrelated to the movie) at another, so he and I took a break out in the hallway. But both boys definitely mowed through a large popcorn pretty effectively!

On the way out, O was insistent that he open the theater door. They had what looked like that spray-on-snow on the glass doors, but when O went to push the door, his hand slid through what looked more like shaving cream. He wasn't quite ready for the slipperiness, and went sliding into the door, covering half his face and jacket with the stuff. So back into the bathroom we went, while Meh and Z were in the car wondering what had happened to us. Anyway, afterwards we headed onward to enjoy some tasty Chinese food at a local establishment - alas, no adventure bites from the boys this time around. And then, a full morning out of the way, it was time for a December 25 nap!

Fast friends

I've posted some pictures in the blog, but haven't really discussed how the whole new bikes thing has been going. The boys have gone riding several times now with minimal crashing, and today I attempted to take them again. We piled the bikes and helmets into the trunk and drove over to Z's elementary school, which features a nice combination of flat areas and a gentle downhill sloping ramp, offering a decent proving ground. Anyway, we arrived, I got the kids out of the car, and then it started hailing -- and I mean hailing buckets. We quickly got back into the car and listened to some Mercy Watson, trying to wait it out as the car was pelted and then soaked as the hail changed to rain. 15 minutes later, it had finally calmed down to a drizzle, so we decided to make our play.

Z is doing great and is able to pedal himself around parking lots and even down the shallow ramp to his elementary school's playground. He hasn't quite figured out stopping yet -- today after coasting down the ramp, I saw him slowly roll all the way into a gentle bump of his school building, "Top Secret" Pinto-style.) O is seemingly simultaneously hyper-cautious and a thrill seeker -- he'll spend much of the time on the bike yelling "Help!" even while I'm actively holding his handlebars, and then alternating that with "Let go daddy! I'm going to do it myself!" If he starts to go forward at all, he'll start braking and again yelling for help. So riding bikes generally entails me walking O and his bike around and occasionally helping Z when he gets stuck in front of an obstacle. Anyway, the boys had a good time.

Then we heard our visiting friends M, K, N, and J were heading to the fun and scenic Seattle park that I'd taken M to years ago when UW was courting him for grad school, so we dropped off the bikes and headed into the city to join them. We arrived to find a bunch of tourists (presumably many local) enjoying the spectacular view from the top of the park, including someone(s) who had arrived in a giant white stretch hummer; the boys I think would've been happy enough to just watch it for a while, but I eventually encouraged them down the many stairs to the park proper where we met up with the S family. Again, the boys had to find the dangerous way to enjoy themselves, walking up the steep slope on the wrong side of a rock stairway railing. But we survived, and then it was clearly supper time - so off to one of M and K's favorite local Thai restaurants.

I was dubious that the boys would volunteer to try some "adventure bites", but O completely surprised me by eating fried lotus root (it helped that I called them "wheel fries", which they totally were) and also gobbling up most of a bowl of white rice. And both of the boys drank nicely from tall grownup glasses of apple juice - good job expanding your palettes! There was also much silliness between O and N; O insisted on sitting next to her and the two of them have clearly become pretty good friends in such a short time.

Our nightcap was at a walkable favorite cupcake establishment. O was almost swayed to a cake pop by N's choice, but instead stuck with a vanilla cupcake with blue icing. Again, he and N sat next to each other and talked their way through the whole dessert course. Z in the meantime chose a classic chocolate with chocolate frosting and then chocolate shavings in the frosting. When I glanced over to see how he was doing, I saw that he had somehow eaten each of the individual chocolate shavings first -- and then moved onto the icing. I couldn't really get Z to try the actual chocolate cupcake, and in the end with things getting late and the kids winding down, I took one for the team by eating the now licked-clean cupcake myself. It was acceptable. On the walk back, O alternated between wanting to hold N's hand (cute except perhaps when trying to cross major intersections) and then dashing forward along with Z (cute except when he ran too fast and bit it on the concrete -- no scrapes or scratches that I could tell). It was so good to get some bonus time with the S family, and we hope they have a smooth rest of their trip away from home, and a safe journey back. We'll have to get back to Texas to see them again soon!