Quick Visit to Knoxville

Noah and Owen showed Max and Otto their favorite pizza place, where you get to shape your own bread dough as an appetizer.

We saw the boys play a ball game. They both seem to have their father's athletic abilities, abilities that were lost on their aunt (me). The game was fun for me, since David is the pitcher/assistant coach. It was a lot more fun to watch him play now, as an adult, than it was when I sat through all his sporting events when I was growing up.

It was not as fun for Max and Otto, who reminded me a bit of myself at their age, sitting through long ball games. Luckily, it was a nice evening with a lovely sunset towards the end. They had more fun picking honeysuckle to decorate Max's hat and climbing the dirt hill. But they cheered their cousins on when they were at bat and tried to understand the game.

Back at the house, the boys tested the swingset Uncle David had built.

Pit Stop in Columbus

The new Commons play area is open for business.

There was a live taping at Zaharako's, and all customers were asked to sit quietly while they filmed (for about 45 minutes). We were rewarded with free food and ice cream. Well worth it.

Miles looked on eagerly as we ate muffins and played Chutes and Ladders. He was certain there would be crumbs.

 The boys put all the stuffies to bed.

It's always hard to say goodbye to Miles. But we'll be back.

Floating in My Mother's Palm

There is a book by this name by Ursula Hegi. I read it before I had children, but I immediately loved the image of this sort of trust that you have between parent and child.

Max can tread water and dive down to get things, but he has never been comfortable to float, to simply lie on his back and relax in the water. He feels too exposed somehow, he says his body won't let him do it, even if I am holding him. Otto has been getting more comfortable in the water, mostly by dunking his head down in the bathtub, but he doesn't want to try to swim or tread water, and although he has trusted me to hold him in a floating position, he has never been comfortable to relax into it, he is always leaning forward somehow, his body in a V position, so that he just sinks down. 

This troubled me somewhat, since I suppose that I value the trust we have above all else. I want them to believe that when I say I will not let go of them, that I truly will not let go, not until they are ready for me to let them go. That I am not trying to trick them. In all areas of our lives. 

But in the sweet little pool of Hotel Indigo, which is 4 and a half feet at its maximum depth, both boys finally trusted me to hold them, to really give into the relaxation of being on their backs with their bellies up. And after a while, both wanted me to let go and see if they could float on their own. And both were amazed they could actually do it. And even more amazed at how much they loved it, especially when they tried it in the hot tub.

Analogy

We had several really busy days when the weather was warm, and we were going going going all day long, like little Energizer Bunnies. But on cold and rainy days, we are barely motivated to do anything at all.

Martin came home today from rainy Boston to see a rainy Chicago, not the beautiful sunny Chicago we had all week, but a cold, dreary day. We picked him up at the airport and wanted to do something, but we were all feeling kind of blah, given the gray day. The traffic was awful, as it is prone to be on rainy days. So we took the side roads and hoped for something of interest to fall into our path. We stopped by American Science and Surplus and looked around at all sorts of odd gadgets, which was fun, even though Otto preferred to stay in the car with me and play Angry Birds while Max and Martin shopped and put together pirate goody bags for the two of them. And then we stopped by the bakery and bought a dozen croissants. And then we came home. It wasn't much of a day, but it was all we could muster.

When we were unpacking Martin's luggage from the car and bringing it inside, Otto said, "Mom, if our days were like luggage, some days are crammed full, where you have a whole bunch of luggage and almost run out of room. And some days you hardly have any luggage at all. Today was a day where we hardly had luggage."

"Yes," I agreed. "Today was almost just a backpack, at least compared to the last few days."

Otto said, "Yes, the last few days, we had so much luggage it didn't fit in the car. We almost needed a plane!"

Now we are home and cozy and plan to spend the rest of this rainy afternoon watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3. I'll go get some popcorn started. Maybe the day will amount to more than a backpack, but I am pretty sure we won't need more than a carry on.

Make Way for Ducklings

We went to the feed store to pick up mealworms and once again, baby chicks were in stock, as well as a few baby ducks. The wonderful store owner let the boys hold them.

The Heat is On

We had a string of warm hot days here. Martin has been out of town all week in Boston, where it is apparently cool and rainy. But here, we are sweltering as though it were July. Typical Chicago spring (it's winter one week and summer the next). I am not really complaining, since it means we got to do fun things, like ride our bikes to Tastee Freeze for our first ice creams of the season, play at the park, do some gardening. 

There was a small disagreement as to who should get to sit in the really cool chair at the park.

The chickens were panting. We gave them some of the iced V8 juice Max was drinking (actually, they helped themselves to it, and so we decided to just give them their own bowl of it).

We just started playing Angry Birds (we are always a bit behind the curve on these things). The boys love it and have zipped through most of the phone app part of the game already, but that hasn't stopped them from finding more angry birds in their lives (and I don't mean the chickens...although they are prone to being disagreeable when you hold them for too long).

 

The boys have been buildilng all sorts of cool constructions with their blocks for the birds to knock over.

 

We made a couple of trips to Home Depot to buy dirt. I always think it's funny to do that. But the shrub selection was even funnier.

Vegetable garden is in. The boys had a great time planting the tomato and pepper seedlings and sowing the seeds for carrots, radishes, and lettuce. Oh, and they got the good idea to plant a row of sunflowers and corn in the back, just behind the tomato plants, so that it will make a kind of fence. I hope the seeds survive the chickens. The boys are so excited to see some sprouts.

After two days of some extremely hot weather, we got a big loud thunderstorm to take us through the night. Apparently the extreme temperature change usually brings about such a storm. I am embarrassed to admit that I had never noticed the connection. The storm came on quickly (even though I had been expecting it), and we still had several windows open. Max's keyboard was drenched within minutes. We ran around, hurriedly closing all the windows and mopping up all the water (and drying out Max's keyboard, which was fine).

We went out to check on the chickens (it was the first night we had taken the winter panel off, which was, in hindsight, a bad idea), and we couldn't find Trickster on the roost. The others looked at us, confused as to why we were interrupting their night. We ran around the yard in the rain, looking for Trickster roosting in a tree or shrub or cowering in a corner, but we couldn't find her. The boys were crying, both from worry about Trickster and fright of the storm. Max made another check in the roost, and he found that Trickster was actually hiding behind/beneath one of the other chickens. Relief. But at the same time, Otto was distraught. He cried for at least half an hour, even once we were all safely inside, even knowing that we were lucky and that all the chickens were safe. I can't imagine what he would have done if we actually had lost her.

The warm weather has also reminded me of what a busy neighborhood we live in. We still don't have our air conditioning hooked up, and even if we did, I usually prefer to have the windows open and enjoy the breeze. But this also means we hear a lot of conversations from people walking down the street, the neighbors grilling out in their back yard, some motorcycles blaring past, or some unidentified crashing of metal which makes you run to the window to investigate. Even our chickens are guilty of making a racket the moment the sun rises. I wonder if they are waking up anyone other than me. These first few days of summer weather always make me want to flee to the country. But then I remember that we can walk to Tastee Freeze and Niko's Italian Ice, or even just park ourselves in the yard and wait for the ice cream truck to drive by, and the city doesn't seem too bad.

Pirates of the Great Lakes

Playmobil has made a bit of a resurgence here, especially the pirate ship. We are gearing up for the 4th Pirates of the Caribbean movie by watching the first three and by beginning another Lego collection. Luckily, those minifigures fit just fine on Playmobil boats.

The ship is missing a styrofoam innard, which would presumably make it float better. We had the idea to put a bunch of styrofoam packing peanuts in the cavity instead.

Unfortuantely, the packing peanuts all leaked out. It made for a much more lively bath.

Mothers 12 Aversary

Mother's Day and our 12th wedding anniversary were both on the same this year, and the boys helped pick out presents, wrap gifts, and make cards. They were very proud of themselves for keeping secrets for so long.

It was a nice day, verging on very warm, and we rode our bikes to the park where the boys played with their friend Nicolas.

And then we went for treats at Letizia's.

Our New Favorite Chips

Our Donkey Chips Commercial, as conceived and performed by Max and Otto. Recorded on iMac's Photo Booth, which makes the whole thing a mirror image, which makes it even more hilarious, in my opinion. These are the boys' new favorite chips, so good, they deserved a harmonica salute. Original song performed by Max, chip handling/modeling by Otto.

British Unit

As close as we come to doing "units," anyway. We watched the Royal Wedding and wondered at all the brightly colored and questionably positioned hats. Otto thought one hat in particular looked like a shoe, a giant blue shoe on someone's head. We all laughed quite a bit about that. We talked about the royal family, about the history of the that particular throne, about other royal families. Mostly, the boys were interested in all the different cars. They thought the build up parade of characters was much more interesting than the actual wedding.

We even got this very special commemorative tin of Scottish shortbread, which was hand delivered by a special courier, directly from Edinburgh. We made a proper pot of tea, and as we ate it, we wished the royal couple well, as you would wish any young marriage well. But mostly, we bit into the lovely buttery texture and smiled happily. Rainer also brought the boys the boys chocolate lollies with Union Jack foils. But those were finished before they had a chance to be photographed.

By coincidence, "The King's Speech" arrived from Netflix that same weekend. It's an absolutely wonderful movie, as is already widely known. We all that it was really interesting to watch a movie about the current queen's father, and it was absolutely a good family movie. The boys had a great time identifying all the actors from roles they already knew: there was Bellatrix Lestrange, Professor Dumbledore and even Peter Pettigrew. Oh, and Captain Barbossa! What fun to have them all together in entirely different roles.

The boys also played checkers on our newly rediscovered giant checkerboard. At one point, the board was filled with at least 10 kings. No one wanted to abdicate their throne.