Second long weekend in July

This was my second 3-day weekend in July.

Working backwards, we had a campfire tonight with toasted marshmallows and/or smores. Before that, we spent the afternoon at Seabreeze amusement park and water park with the kids and Nate and Jon. Lots of fun.

Before that I weedwhacked and cleaned up the hill.

Saturday we all went to Lyons and unfortunately missed the Peppermint Festival festivities but had a nice relaxing afternoon on Maple Street instead.

On Friday I had a date night with Mary Grace while Anne went to a swim birthday party with William (where he "crashed and burned"). Before that we went to Durand Eastman park and played on the beach for a few hours.

Before that, and to kick off the weekend, I took the training wheels off of the kids bikes and started the learning process! They both did a fine job, taking a few revolutions on their bikes themselves. I think it'll be a quick job getting them riding, but I think Mary Grace is a little more anxious than William about it.

And Bob's your uncle.

Mary Grace's dance recital 2011

I've finally successfully uploaded one of Mary Grace's recital performaces (out of two). You can't miss my little dancer right in the front center at the beginning!

She did very good and we were all very proud of her!

You're a GRAND OLD FLAG!

Part of Mary Grace's kindergarten celebration was the singing of "You're a Grand Old Flag", and it was very cute. Afterwards she adopted the philosophy that whenever she sees a US Flag, she will sing that opening verse of the song. And every time she sings it, it gets stuck in my head too!

So I was just looking at a picture that Mary Grace drew on my wall in my cubicle and noticed that I was humming "It's a Grand Old Flag" to myself. I guess my brain has become conditioned now!

EDIT - After writing this briefly this morning, I thought it would be prudent to include the picture. Background: She drew this at the Midtown child care by looking in the mirror and making facial expressions then drawing what she saw.



I can't decide if I like the pictures or the misspellings more!

William and "Break The Ice"

I'm sure some of you are familiar with the game "Don't Break The Ice", where there's a platform of little plastic cubes held up by pressure One of the ice cubes has a little skater guy attached. You tap on the ice cubs with a little hammer trying to knock out the cubes without knocking out the guy.

Ever since William got the game from Santa, he has cried ever since he won, because the other person got to break the ice (make the remaining ice cubes fall down, resulting in the guy falling). Our attempts to explain that he actually won were useless. If anyone broke the ice, William had a mini-tantrum! In response to this, we renamed the game "Break The Ice", since that was the new objective.

Well, he finally come around some time ago and now plays the game like a big boy. Little things like this remind me that my boy is becoming all grown up.

William is cracking me up.

He just referred to Saran wrap as "Plastic Ratburn". I think he's mixing up "plastic wrapper" with "Mr. Ratburn" from the TV show Arthur.

He also just instructed me to go catch the spider in the basement to release him outside. He added "I'll be hiding in the corner of the basement behind the garbage can".

Fathers day = Strawberry picking

36 holes with my son

Today William and I had a boy day as Anne and Mary Grace had both dance recital photos and a baby shower. I gave William the opportunity to choose anything he wanted to do, and while his initial choice was for Rochester Museum and Science Center, I convinced him that an outdoor activity might be more fun.

So he chose miniature golf. We drove to Henrietta and played 18 holes. During those 18 holes, William got two hole-in-ones. In fact, he had so much fun that we played a second 18 holes! That's right, 36 holes of (miniature) golf with my boy today. And it was fun!

After golf, we came back home for a quick lunch, then off to the Midtown swimming pool for an afternoon of fun in the sun Mary Grace and Anne joined us for the last hour or so, so it turned into an enjoyable outing for the family.

Also, "in fact" is something that William says frequently, as he has been since he was 4. "I like summer. In fact, it's my favorite time of the year!"

William's mis-hearing

Heard William utter the term "eyebulb" instead of "eyeball". He's combining eyeball and light bulb.

When he was a few years younger he also thought I was talking about a thunderstorm when I uttered the term "undershirt".

I remember having a lot of these growing up. I encourage the kids to ask questions, but for some reason they've already got it into their heard that learning is what goes on at school and fun is what goes on at home.

Photos by Mary Grace

I was luckily enough to score a "Bag Of Crap" during a Woot-Off on woot.com a while back. One of the items I got was a cute little caribener digital camera with a whopping 640x480 resolution, no on-screen preview, and no flash.

Mary Grace recently rediscovered it and here are the photos she took (all pictures were run through Picasa "I'm feeling lucky" filter due to lack of flash).

Anne suggested I tell you that there are 2 decent photos out of the 45 in this slide show. :)

Waking up to a spanking.

Last night William climbed into my bed at about 5:00am. Since I was awake, I almost started to wake up and start my Sunday super early, but the prior day work got the better of me and I decided to stay in bed and snuggle.

That lasted about 45 minutes, at which point I was awakened to William rapidly spanking my arm, probably 10 times. I asked him what he was doing at which point he opened his eyes and said "I'm spanking you...". If there are any social services folks reading, please trust me when I say that we've never spanked our kids.

Next I asked why he was spanking me? He turned over and went back to sleep.

Bet when you read the title you didn't think Daddy was getting a spanking, right?

Internet savey Mary Grace

Talking with Anne about my upcoming bike ride, and suddenly I hear "Friday" by Rebecca Black start playing on the ipad, followed by Mary Grace, with a beaming smile, saying

"I did that all by myself!"

Yes, she went to YouTube, typed "Friday" and played the video.

Straight up with a chaser!

After coming down with a pretty mild case of Strep throat, Mary Grace had to go on antibiotics. Since both Anne and I have a penicillin allergy, I should have figured that Mary Grace was a candidate too, but I didn't. Well, don't you know after a week of being on it she developed hives ALL OVER.

Freaked us out a little, so much so that we took Mary Grace to her pediatrician who pronounced judgement. Benadryl at such and such an interval. Duhh.

So the brave little thing decided to take it without any mixers, as have always been a requirement for medicine in the past. And she's done well with it. Tonight I gave her the dosage and asked if she wanted it "straight up".

Mary Grace: "What does that mean?"

Daddy: "It means, you don't mix it with anything"

Mary Grace: "OK, I'll take it straight up with a chaser"

My little daughter, tossing around the big girl bar terms. Too funny.

BTW, the chaser was apple juice.

Bedtime with William.

Tonight William lost 15 minutes of evening play time because he was naughty at the vet's office. So we're going to bed and he says "we didn't even have any time to play because you were washing the dishes".

I explained that everybody who eats also washes dishes, and the he could have helped me so that it would take less time.

He replied "But I want to be a boxer when I grow up, not a guy that washes dishes!".

So now he's successfully stalled bedtime and having a "bedtime snack" in the kitchen, which will inevitably lead to stalling at teeth brushing time, stalling a book selection time, stalling at book reading time. So much for going to bed early...

A warm spring day

Here's a few photos I snapped of the kids after having our first dinner on the back deck on May 13, 2011. The weather was sunny and the high was near 80. The kids had their bathing suits on and were running through the sprinkler in the back yard, just having a blast!

The new playhouse and swing set, part 1 of 2

Please, oh please, let this only be a 3 weekend project...

Starting with last weekend, I started gathering and prepping my supplies. Pressure treated wood and fasteners, then cutting, routing, and stacking. The wood then got to relax and dry out for a week as I made plans for assembly.

My awesome brother from Buffalo volunteered to come to Rochester to help put it together! We started at around 10, and by 3:00 we had the structure assembled. After some time leveling the whole thing, we moved on to the deck support boards and deck. This went pretty well despite some missteps using the chalk line. We next moved on to railings for the side and back. At this point we decided to wrap it up for the day.

The weather actually mostly cooperated except for the rain from noon until 4, when some of the assembly had to be done in the garage. We had to don ponchos for some of the outdoor work. All in all, it was a productive day and we're all pleased with the progress.

Next weekend should be final assembly and prototyping the swings and slide and sandbox.

After that comes the nonstop fun that a play set in one's yard will bring!

Miss Preston

William's teacher has an assistant this year and her name is Miss Preston. Ever since the beginning of school William has been talking about Miss Preston. Tonight at bed time I asked him why he likes Miss Preston so much. Here's his response:

"I like miss preston because she never gets mad at me... She never puts her eyebrows down".

I just loved that he put the angry face into a few simple words like that. He continued:

"Miss preston has the prettiest blue eyes. I just like her so much! Even when I do something naughty, she says 'William, you shouldn't do that' instead of getting mad. I LIKE HER SO MUCH!

My first bike ride with my kids!

We finally got William a big boy bike and Mary Grace got upgraded from her 12" bike with training wheels to a 16" bike. Ever since then they have both been so excited to go on bike rides.

We took a ride up and down the street a few nights ago and I was having trouble keeping up with William (aka Cannonball - thanks Michael Bell). So tonight, I got my bike out too and all three of us took a little ride together!

We rode down towards the pedestrian bridge, then rode up the ramp to the playground at School #1. I was most impressed with their ability to ride up the ramp, then on the way back with their ability to use the brakes on their bikes to slow themselves down.

William lost some of his Cannonball energy towards the end, and I noticed that when Mary Grace's helmet came off after the ride that her hair was a little sweaty. So we had fun and got a little exercise too!

Next time, Anne has offered to come along as well!

At the Farmer's Brunch

Last month I was asked by Mary Grace's school to volunteer for the Farmer's Brunch. To go along with what the kids were learning at that time they had parents donate food and time to run a parent/child brunch.

The parents helped the kids cook various foods, then we got to eat what we cooked! It sounded good to me and I had all the fixin's for a good cowboy costume, so yeehaw...

Mary Grace got a new bandana and a pretty red straw hat and just looked so cute!

Mary Grace and I and several other kids all ended up on pancake duty, which was perfect since we've been making pancakes together since she was 3. The kids measured and poured and mixed, and even poured the batter onto the skillet. The cowboy took over from there.

When the food was all done, all the parents got to join the kids for a nice brunch.

The parts I'll remember for a while are: being called "Silly Mr. Daddy man" by a bunch of kids, because Mary Grace told them that's my name. ??? Also, getting to meet a bunch of Mary Grace's friends from her class that I'd never met before.

Here's a few photos of the fun event!

The Big Birthday Party

William has been looking forward to the Big Birthday Party at Bernies Bouncers. He invited his whole preschool class to the big shindig, and there were a few regrets, so he got to invite a bunch of his friends from the neighborhood too!

Bernies Bouncers is highly recommended. Rather than subjecting your party to the public and losing most of your party most of the time, they have a private party room with big inflated slide things, games and a self-propelled train things on a track. Only your group occupies this room for the duration of your party. It's far superior. :)

We had very good luck at the event as nobody misbehaved and there were only a few small bumps and scratches. William got a naughty scratch on his tummy that is now being covered by a cool Dracula band aid (Thanks Andrea and Larry!).

The pizza and cake were delicious and then the party was over! No prep and no cleanup made it much easier on Mommy and Daddy. Now if we could only find a place to store all the toys this birthday season has brought William!



Happy 5th birthday, William!

William's parsing skills

So we've noticed that William is getting better at listening and parsing out important (to him) information from what people are saying. Here's an example.

Anne: William, it's time to get dressed for school
William:
Anne: William, you have to get dressed. I'm not going to tell you again!
William: (does something else)
Anne: William, get dressed now or you'll be late for school!
William: Mommy, you said you weren't going to tell me again!

He finally did get dressed though...

Anne notes that he's also started quoting commercials in his hard-sell to get her to buy him things. For example:

William: (watches butterfly garden commercial)
William: Mommy, I want a butterfly garden
Anne: Well, we'll see.
William: Mommy, if you buy me the butterfly garden, you can get twice as many butterflies for only a little bit more money!