Visiting Grandma Sarah and Grandpa Sol

Immediately after Thanksgiving dinner at Grandpa Lou's house, we zipped the kids into their jammies, brushed teeth, said goodnight, and got in the car for the long drive to Bubbie's house. The next morning we left Steve behind to get a break (he had spent the last couple of weeks taking care of everybody as I got over the plague) and loaded ourselves into Bubbie's car to visit Great Grandma Sarah and Great Grandpa Sol.

Samuel had a nice time playing with Grandpa Sol, tossing the basketball back and forth. Samuel even set up a bucket as a basket and tested Grandpa, to see if he could get it in, moving it back each time Grandpa made it. Pretty impressive for a blind guy.

Shira got cuddly with Grandma, and we all had a very pleasant visit. I wish we could visit more often, but that 6 hour drive is a killer.

Stone Soup 2011

This year we made sure to bring Shira. Almost as frigid as last year, but I was prepared this time. Our contribution were CSA shelling beans, herbs from the garden and leeks.

Samuel loved performing the song that the kids had been practicing. The smile of pure joy when he saw Steve standing with all the other parents was priceless.

Can't get much more with the season than jumping and hiding in huge pile of leaves.

Reading and Writing for one, Super Emo for the other

Within the last couple of weeks Samuel has begun to exhibit a strong interest in letters, words and spelling. It began with his preschool placemat. Every night at dinner time he would point to each photo of a student with their parent and ask about the letters in their names. As the nights went on, he started naming the letters in each name, and within a few days he was associating the sound with each letter. We've begun the adventure into sounding out words.

Yesterday I asked Teacher Rachel for some curriculum books, and tomorrow we will get started practicing writing. Samuel is very excited. Rachel gave us a little chalkboard to go along with the writing workbook and Samuel immediately picked it up, drew an "L" and told me what it was, what sound it made, and a few words that started with "L" (including "Lisa", of course).

Mainly I just want to make sure he can write his name, since he will be asked to do that a lot in kindergarten, but he's so excited about it, I think we'll be running with it. Next up is checking out some "Bob" books, which are apparently books for the early reading set that are written using only words that are spelled phonetically. We already knew how non-sensical English spelling is, but now that we are sounding out words with Samuel left and right, it really hits home how difficult it is to teach someone how to spell properly in English. I remember when I was studying in Italy and I learned that the subject "spelling" simply doesn't exist in Italian schools. Since Italian letters always sound the same, you can just sound out any word to spell it correctly.

Shira is definitely listening to Samuel and his letter interests, it wouldn't surprise me if she started reading and writing very early just because of it. She has been singing the alphabet of late. But her most notorious new skill at the moment is her use of colloquial English. She can be heard saying "Oh man!" with just the right intonation repeatedly through the day. She said "Oh jeez!" yesterday, and I hopefully nipped that in the bud (though Samuel got confused and told her not to say that but "Damn it!" instead, which I then had to remind him I didn't want either of them to say either. Oy.)

She also enjoys the superlative "super" and uses it frequently to describe her emotions. As in, "Me super sad because ball undies (her fave underwear that has soccer balls, baseballs and basketballs on them) are in the laundry," and "Me super happy I see Bubbie next week and she sew buttons on my shirt." Also, yesterday she informed me, totally unprompted, "Me had super good time with Fabiola. We went to park and made popscicles."

Most days they are just so perfect it almost hurts. I almost never want to give them away to strangers anymore.

The Hair Cut

Thanks baby for finally growing it for me. I don't miss it too much, though, now that it's gone.

Goodbye Tandems, Hello Tandem

At 8 o'clock in the morning on Saturday, December 6, 2003 I emailed a guy that I had been corresponding with through JDate to ask if he would be interested in test riding a tandem with me (I had always wanted a tandem and decided I would buy one for myself for my recent birthday). I didn't expect him to respond in time, since I doubted that he was awake, or checking email at 8am, but shortly after I wrote to him, he called me.

Steve said he'd be happy to check out the tandem with me, but was taken aback when I asked him what kind of car he drove. He decided he would meet me after all, when I explained that I was only asking to see if his car was big enough to transport the bike home should I choose to buy it. The answer was obviously no, since his Toyota Corolla was barely bigger than my Toyota Tercel.

When we arrived at the house of the gentleman who owned the Schwinn Twinn we were about to ride, I informed Steve that he would need to captain it (ride in front and steer) since I am much smaller than him. This was news to Steve, but he got huge points for still being willing to try it, on a first date, with the date being an experienced cyclist. What guy is confident enough to do that?

The tandem ride lasted only minutes, but the date lasted 5 more hours. I bought the tandem. This December will mark the eighth anniversary of that tandem ride, and though I just sold the tandem (it was a tank and Steve hated riding it), I can't imagine anyone I'd rather ride our new tandem with.

I also said goodbye to our Trek. Now that we have kids, we never get a chance to ride either of these tandems.

And the purchase that made these two sales necessary: I finally found a tandem that I can captain. In order to warrant purchasing a new tandem, I had to clear out the old ones. Samuel and I have a blast riding this together, and within the next year, Shira will be hooked up behind us on the trail a bike.

It was easy to sell the Trek.

But selling the Schwinn that Steve and I rode and I purchased on our first date, was hard to come to terms with.

Trains

Have been very popular recently. I finally feel like buying all that Brio was worthwhile. Samuel and Shira built this entire track on their own.

Preschool with Shira

Shira's favorite station - handwashing after the painting project.

And her second favorite - the painting itself.

Loves the lawn mowers and doll strollers.

And snack time.

And after preschool for Shira, we head over to Samuel's preschool for storytime and the goodbye song.

And whew, preschool is tiring work. Face plant in art project.