Biking at ducky park

I took D&J to ducky park this afternoon before dinner so they could ride their bikes on the path around the pond. This is the second time I've done it - the first was a week or two ago. The first time (and the first lap on the bikes) was quite slow, as the boys were feeling very timid and putting the brakes on ever few feet (literally) - it took us about 18 minutes to make one loop.

This time around there were no hesitations (especially for J). They were going quite fast, to the point that i could no longer keep up with them unless i was running pretty hard. Jackson even made a couple loops by himself while D and I were stopped. They have a lot of fun riding there, although unless i bring my own bike, I'll have to get comfortable with them making the loops on their own - which is probably fine, but they are still a bit prone to potential falls if anything unexpected happens.

The second annual DIG sandcastle tournament

Today was the second annual sandcastle tournament hosted by the Kachers/Riersons. Once again it was a spectacular day at the beach - not a cloud in the sky and high 60s temp, little/no wind.

Last year, we were paired with the Crawfords, who ended up not making the event. J&D were 3, and quite a handful to keep track of (no, don't go into the water!). Annabel was 5 months pregnant with Tyler. Needless to say, our sandcastle efforts were rather limited (some might say futile).

What a difference a year makes -- this time around, we left Tyler at home with Jade, and the 4 year old boys were pretty into the whole thing - even helping out for a while. Annabel was mobile, and we were paired with Franzie and Nicole, who brought all kinds of skills/energy to the table. We did a shark (given that the boys are pretty obsessed with them these days), and the picture doesn't really do the shark justice - it looked pretty good! We ended up taking second place, so we're now the proud owners of a little trophy.

The boys had a great time - running around on the beach with their friends, helping with the shark, and eating lots of food (this is a pretty big event - probably 30 families and ~15 teams participating). It'll be a lot of fun as they get older and become more active in the contest. Unfortunately we forgot our camera, so below is what i could do with the phone (unless/until i get a better one from Glen).

Grandma Luke's visit

Anna came down for a couple of days at the end of September. The boys had a great time hanging out with her - including some Ty-time in the backyard, and lots of story time....

Visiting Monterey Acquarium

Anna is in town for a few days, and today she and Annabel took all three boys down to Monterey for a visit to the acquarium. It sounds like it was a pretty good visit, although a lot of work with Tyler at this age. One big anticipated event was seeing the great white shark, which was cool, although I guess the boys were a bit disappointed b/c the shark is only ~4 feet long. They like the sunfish, which is some huge blob-like fish. Jackson also had a great time in some walkway where a "wave" crashes overhead through a clear plastic covering.

Gomp and Elie

The boys have some great imaginary friends (who are also very versatile!). Gomp and Elie (or is it Illy?) have been around for quite a while, maybe since J&D were 2 years old.  

 

They play a variety of roles – usually Gomp is their dad, and Elie is their mom. Sometimes they are also their kids.  Often, J&D each have their own Gomp and Elie. They will have birthday parties for them, they will go visit them at their houses, etc.

 

Today Annabel emailed me to inform me that the boys are renting a car to go visit Nana and Poppy. They were en route to pick up Gomp, then were going to pick up Elie. Sounds like it will be a great trip!

Random D & J musings

1) Dillon's favorite phrase these days seems to be "OK, bye-bye" He says it all the time, whether its appropriate or not. It's been driving Annabel and Jade crazy, and I got introduced to it this weekend. I think he just likes how it sounds.

2) "quiet times" are virtually impossible anymore. They almost never nap, and they always want to play together, despite always being together and often getting on each other's nerves all morning. A good day is when they stay in their rooms, play with their trains and are generally quiet; a typical day includes several yelling episodes (general excitement), one or two fights (with yelling, of course), and too many doors opening/closing/slamming as they run back and forth.

3) They are into potty talk now (thank you Jon and Bonnie's boys! ;-) so there are several references a day. We're trying to manage this by making them go into the bathroom if they use the words, but clearly the horse has left the barn on this one.

4) Jackson is obsessed with talking about animals and whether or not they eat people. A dinner can't go by without questions around tigers, lions, pumas, bears, and sharks and whether they would eat little boys, or whether baby animals would eat grown-ups, etc.

5) We really miss our precious few minutes of quiet morning time. Jackson is now inclined to wake up before 7, sometimes as early at 6:30. He has been going into Dillon's room and waking him up to, or he'll lie down out in the upstairs landing and read through books or play with a toy. That, combined with Tyler usually waking up and crying sometime between 7-7:20, means that the days often start before we are ready. Oh, for those early D&J days when we would go wake them up in their cribs at 7:50!

6) D&J have become full-on TV ("video") junkies ... before, they would always enjoy them, but they didn't always ask for them - it was more of a treat. Now they ask to watch videos multiple times a day, and we're probably now averaging a show a day at this point. Still much lower than a lot of folks (a show is 20-30 minutes), but more than we'd prefer. Their favorites are still Dora, but they now also like Diego, Mickey's club house, and Thomas episodes.

7) They've gotten much better at making their own train track sets - they can always make a wooden circle, and they make fairly elaborate setups with the geotrax set, including the bridge and a loop.

Happy Hollow

Took D&J to happy hollow this morning, although it was a fairly brief visit. We got there right at 10 when it opened and were one of the first handful of families to enter. It was an odd feeling at first, a bit depressing because it was so empty (the overcast skies and slightly cool weather didn't help). The boys hit all the main carousels, did their favorites slides, and rode dennis the dragon train. We left before lunch so skipped the puppet show, which we had attended the last visit in august, and i was a bit surprised that the boys complained about that (they seemed pretty disinterested in the puppets last time when we did stick around).

Finally Back ...

OK, I know, it's lame that i go on these really long hiatuses (or is that hiati?). The good news is that i generally backfill and pre-date the entries so that they show up in the right chronological order.

Today is September 9, and I'm finally returning to the blog after my last real-time post on June 28. At least this time I (sort of) have an excuse - we left for vacation on July 3rd, and I (understandably) didn't post anything during the extended vacation time (through July 21). I had grand plans to sit down at the computer on our return and post all the pictures from our trip along with witty commentary, but the day before we left Grandpa's house, we discovered that our camera's memory card was corrupted and couldn't be read. Yikes! Fortunately, Grandpa was able to send it off somewhere to have it fixed and salvage the pictures. This took a while, so we didn't actually get them until mid-August. And then it took me a couple of weeks to sit down and get back in the groove. And here we are.

Sooo... i'm going to add in postings since June 28 and will put them in with the relevant time stamp. And going forward I promise i'll be better about staying current!

Running the boys

I took J&D to Stanford this afternoon - we parked between the football and baseball stadiums, and they rode their bikes around for a while. We stopped and watched some divers practicing, then spent some time on the rugby field playing with the pump rockets. The boys had a blast running around, chasing the rockets and chasing each other - it was a great workout for them.

Happy 4th birthday!

Today the boys turned 4!

Annabel organized a party at "Pump it up", a place up in San Carlos with a big room filled with inflatable stuff - bouncy houses, slides, obstacle courses. It was a good crowd - 2/3 co-op kids and 1/3 friends from school/neighborhood. They had a great time - lots of running around and sliding/playing. It seemed like they had fun seeing some of their school friends again.

We closed with pizza and a dora cake. Due to a miscommunication with the place, the pizza showed up almost 30 minutes later than we expected, which was a bit of drag - lots of hungry kids at the end of playime! Otherwise, it went off quite well.

It's amazing how much of a difference another year makes - this year the kids were all so independent, and the food was relatively orderly with no major spills/meltdowns/etc. Another difference from a year ago was that the party was almost half girls (from their school - Anya, Claire, Molly, Bridget, Duff, Kate).

Despite the request for no gifts on the invitations, we of course got things from almost everyone who came - all great stuff. Our gifts for the boys were new bikes - 16 inch specialized mountain bikes. They were pretty excited, and we've had a couple of rides with them. They are still learning how to ride them - Jackson in particular is easily distracted and loses his pedaling rhythm/momentum. It's been almost 2 months since they rode at Black Butte, so there was a bit of a relearning curve. Dillon has been pretty tentative when faced with any kind of downhill slope (e.g. our block on Sterling Ave).