the boy | matching tracksuits

Leaves

Friday 23 November 2012 | 0 Comments

When you have a backyard like ours, with so many huge trees with so many thousands upon thousands of leaves, there's only one thing to do on a late-November afternoon. It takes a bit of work at first, but the Girl loves work when it's play -- a sort of Tom Sawyer in reverse.

Yet quickly enough, the fun begins.

The Girl remembers from last year the fun of jumping in the leaves, but she's forgotten -- or simply not realized -- the fact that she weighs significantly more this year. And this means a harder impact, for leaves don't provide as much cushion as a five-year-old might assume.

The Boy, on the other hand, takes a totally different approach. Calm, curious he sits among the leaves and wiggles his feet, swings his arms, and enjoys the newness of the situation.

It's easy to credit this to his age, but there's a personality difference that's indisputable.

There's a certain explosiveness to the Girl ("You think?" responds everyone who's ever met her.) that finally finds direction, throwing leaves here, there, and just about everywhere.

The amount of leaves in her hair after this little adventure astounds. And we haven't even begun burying each other.

Still, we sometimes manage to get her calmed down within the near proximity of the Boy for a portrait.

But the calm doesn't last.

Still, it wouldn't be the same family if it did.

Morning Play

Sunday 18 November 2012 | 0 Comments

We're almost in quarantine. With the Boy still a little iffy from a previous illness and K sick, we have stayed inside the whole weekend. Sometimes, though, that's just what we need: a lazy Sunday morning with everyone doing what we want. L reads; the Boy plays; I hang out with my children.

As the morning wears on, I turn my attention to the Boy's lunch: a soup made of pureed potatoes, carrots, squash, broccoli, and chicken. The Boy loves it, and I can see why: it's really not that bad, despite the fact that it's a bit bland due to the lack of seasoning.

The Girl helps with our lunch, which includes an eternal favorite for L: shrimp. This time, we set her to work cleaning them.

After lunch, a walk that reveals the irony of suburbia: nature and concrete.

With a short week in front of us, a relaxed Sunday is about perfect.

Growth

Thursday 15 November 2012 | 0 Comments

WordPress's automated permalink creator tells me that this is the fourth time I've titled a post "growth." I suppose the real surprise is that, given the fact that we have two kids, I haven't used that title more often. It's a constant refrain in the house, among friends and family, even acquaintances.

"How she's grown!"

"How he's grown!"

Still, for K and me, that growth is gradual. Parents get used to seeing their children daily and the incremental changes disappear into the blur of everyday reality until we suddenly see something that shows, pointedly, how much a child has grown.

Like stumbling on an old picture.

At six months, he spills out of the chair he barely fit into at six days.

Sunday Downtown

Sunday 11 November 2012 | 0 Comments

We never made it to Falls Park during our walk yesterday, so the family decided to start there today. I would have guessed, were someone to ask me, that we were too late to get much of an autumnal view, but I was happily mistaken.

This time, though, we took the whole family, including our one-and-a-half tooth Wonder Boy who seems willing to smile at just about anything.

The Boy's smile probably had something to do with my wiggling fingers and silly face, but with colors like this, though, who could resist a smile?

As we headed into the main downtown area of the park, the sun came out fully and consistently, making the Peace Center glow. We, though, were less glowing, especially the Girl, who had by then adopted an all-too-familiar refrain: "I'm hungry."

Nothing is quite as filling on a fall day as an ice cream cone,

and it never tastes as better than when outside. Or so someone told me.

With the Grandparents

Thursday 08 November 2012 | 0 Comments

Entertaining

Wednesday 07 November 2012 | 0 Comments

With some help, the Boy can now sit. He casts his eyes here and there, his attention drawn to this sound or that motion, and his arms or legs are constantly in motion. It seems like it would be a good match for the hyper Girl.

They sit together, banging anything and everything, both delighted with the racket.

The difference comes later, when the Boy has a moment alone and sits silently, almost contemplatively, for a seemingly impossible length of time. The Girl wouldn’t last three seconds.

Dominoes

Tuesday 06 November 2012 | 0 Comments

The Girl has learned how to play dominoes -- at least, a version of Mexican Train from a set with missing pieces. She generally tends to place her tiles on the table face up because, as she explains, she needs help. I tell her that perhaps it's best if I don't see what she has because it's tempting to make decisions based on that knowledge.

Still, sheÂ does need the help. She often overlooks playable tiles and tends to draw without really thinking. And then there's her tendency to get ahead of herself -- a less magnanimous father would say "cheat" -- and slip another tile down before I play.

"Um, I might have gone a different direction, Tata."

In the end, the Girl wins, semi-fair-and-square. I'm fairly sure there were a couple of times she played twice while I was wrestling the Boy. Then again, I know of at least one time she missed a tile and I said nothing. Perhaps I was desperate to make a decent showing.