We’ve taken two substantial trips on the tag along bike. I think Dad is chomping at the bit to describe the second trip, so I’ll outline the first trip.
I decided to bike in with Alice to day care, and 3/4 of the trip (or more) went great. Alice chattered at me and actually pedaled part of the time. The tag-along seemed easier to pull than the trailer. Then as we were approaching the day care along a residential street, I felt back and noticed the tag along bar seemed oddly rotated. I braked and shortly after Alice fell off.
Fortunately, she was wearing a helmet, so there was no lasting injury. The only visible mark was a scab on her upper lib. It made her kind of look like Hitler. Fortunately the scab came off this weekend.
Another biker caught up with us and said that he had noticed the tag along getting crooked, and he was trying to catch up and warn us. The problem was that I had not sufficiently tightened the mounting hardware on my bike. After a few stops at crossings with all of Alice’s weight pushing on the mount point, it must have shifted around.
I couldn’t get the mount point turned around. And I didn’t really want to chance it with Alice again, so we walked in the last couple blocks. Alice calmed down pretty quickly, and she was a good trooper about the whole ordeal. By the time we got to day care, she agreed that she wanted to try again.
Once home, I was able to reset the mount point and tighten it a lot (to the point of possible stripping one of the hex screws). I also stole the small set bag from Alan’s back and I’m hauling around a hex wrench set.
The next trip ultimately went much better. But I’ll let Dad take that story.
[Dinner conversation]
Mom: So did you think they were pretty?
Alice: Yes.
Dad: But not as pretty as Daddy.
Alice: They were prettier.
Dad: Prettier than Daddy?
Alice: Yes.
Dad: Oh, Alice, how can you say that?
Alice: My brain didn’t tell me! Wake up, brain! Do you want to talk to my brain?
Dad: Not right now, maybe after dinner.
Later Alice came in to my office and told me her brain was ready to talk to me.
[Coming back from soccer practice]
Corwin: You’d give me away to the flying space monkeys if they attacked?
Dad: I’d give you away if they just showed up.
Corwin: What about Charles?
Dad: No! Not my sweet Charles.
Corwin: Could I take Poly with me?
Dad: Hmmm. You would have to ask Mom about that.
Today the boys had games at the same time in two different locations. I decided to go to Corwin’s because I had been favoring Charles the last couple of weeks.
Unfortunately, it was another game totally dominated by Corwin’s team. By the last quarter the coach had told the kids not to score, but just play “keep away” from the other team near their goal. The final score was only 6-1 because the offense was cut back starting by the second quarter (after the team ran up 3 goals in the first 10 minutes or so). Corwin played defense while he was in so he didn’t get much action, although by the end of the game Corwin’s team (less the goalie) were all in the far quarter of the field.
Corwin had a mixed game. The only score by the other team involved blowing past Corwin on the way. On the other hand, Corwin did better later, making some good blocks and kicks to disrupt the few times the other team generated an attack. He does need to hustle more, though — he tends to leak when the ball isn’t coming close because he doesn’t want to move until it’s clearly necessary, rather than running even when someone else makes the stop.
But because of the dominance, the game itself was only moderately interesting. The one neat bit was a passing score. A player made a drive in on the left and took a shot, which was deflected by the goalie. Another player was (precisely as drilled in during practice) hanging out on the other side of the goal and just tapped the ball in for the score. No big kick, just tap, score. Sweet.
It was a nice day last week so we went out to have a snack on the back porch. Charles naturally set up a defensive perimeter so that lunch would be safe. I want to be clear that we told Charles he could have snack out on the porch, at which point he got his defense team together and deployed them on the table.
Safely snacking
Prepared to defend
Corwin, Charles, and I all biked to the most recent soccer practice because Mom has been making Corwin bike to practice for the exercise, and this time Charles insisted on biking as well. I ended up watching Corwin’s practice and … encouraging a higher level of physical activity. Corwin merely comment “don’t you want to watch Charles’ practice?”. That’s my reward for being involved.
I am accumulating material for later in life. Someday, Alice will be fashionista and I need to prepare for that by documenting the results of letting her make her own fashion choices.
“You think that is fashionable and appropriate? Let me show you what you look like when you pick your own clothes …”.
Naturally, when Alice paraded in to my office in this get up, I had to take a picture. I asked her to stand in front of the fireplace (because the ceiling is low there giving a better bounce flash). Alice, however, had decided that having a picture taken meant “modeling” and this is the result. Still, more ammunition for me.
During some school presentation, Charles was introduced to mealworms which are centipede like larva of a beetle. They are commonly used as food for other pets, such as lizards. Charles became obsessed with them and Mom, being the soft touch she is, decided to buy some for Charles while they were at the pet store last week. No mealworms were available, but the store did have “super worms” or Zophobas Morio pictured at the left, roughly life sized.
Mom bought a packet of 25 live zophobas, plus worm food and worm drink, put them all together in a Tupperware container and life was good for Charles, Alice, and the zophobas. Mom, unfortunately, is stuck cleaning out the container every few days, although there has been only one worm death, leaving 27 (bonus!) live worms. The worm drink is interesting, it’s basically very watery jello. The worm food looks like sawdust to me, and doubles as bedding. I have suggested using the worms for the proper function and feeding some to Poly without success.
Charles and Alice take down the container every day or two and watch the worms for a bit. It doesn’t look like 27 worms to me, but Mom claims to have picked them all out with chopsticks and counted and it’s way easier to believe than count myself.
At some point after Alice became Rude Tummy Noise Girl I was sitting on the couch while Alice made rude noises. I wondered how many rude noise making Alices there were, at which point Alice started running around the house pretending to be a different rude noise making Alice every time and making me count up how many there were. I announced that I was going to catch one, and Alice mocked (mocked!) me (her own Dad!) for making such a bold claim. She said she was way too fast for me to catch. I said that I would just trick her instead. She laughed at the very idea. But, a couple of laps later, she fell for the “oh, what’s that behind the seat cushion?” trick. Hahaha, burn.
I pointed out that I successfully tricked her, and Alice responded “I know. I am not having a particularly good day today”.
Corwin has to type up a report for school, so Mom set him down in front of her laptop in the kitchen, and then wandered in to my office to disrupt my work with the news that Corwin types using only one finger. Mom tried to convince to at least go with one finger on each hand, but to no avail. Mom suggested that perhaps she could get him a program to teach him typing, which Corwin heard as “a program that types for me” much to his nearly immediately dismay. I mentioned to Mom that we might get him a speech to text program in that vein, but really he doesn’t do so well at talking either.
Corwin’s friends play a new type of soccer at the Middle School picnic
which seems to involve tackling and sticks, and throwing the ball
but is otherwise just like soccer
As noted previously we have decided that Charles is too old to take a bath with Alice, no matter how much Alice whines about it. However, Alice has found a work around to the problem. She insists that she has to go potty right now when Charles is put in the bathtub and then stays on the potty until he’s done with his bath. This doesn’t seem to bother Charles much, even if Alice manages to generate some poop which, because Alice isn’t “done” yet, lingers to provide a background aroma to the proceedings.
Mom has been on a bicycling boost for a while now, prompted primarily as part of the process of having Corwin to ride his bike to school. I managed to stay out of it mostly, by dint of not having a helmet or working bicycle lock.
But yesterday, after Josh and Jake were over visiting1, I suggested that we pop out to get bike helmets and locks (because Charles needs one as well) after dumping returning our guests to their abode. Our primary mission was successful but while we were there, Charles spotted a bike buddy which Mom has been mentioning for the last few weeks. Alice is becoming tired and (she claims) too big for the normal trailer. Mom has seen a few of these around town and decided it was just the thing for Alice. What impressed me was Charles actually finding something that neither Mom nor I had noticed. This from a boy who can’t find his shoes if they are more than 10° away from directly in front of him. Dare I engage in some hope?
Anyway, today Mom hooked up the bike trailer and took Alice out for a short spin on our street, mainly to see if Alice would stay on. They were accompanied by Poly, who could not bear to not be a part of the experience. How she managed to not get bits of her nose sliced off by Mom’s spokes I fail to understand.
Overall, it seemed a success. It will be interesting, but probably more so from hearing about it afterwards that direct experience, the first time Mom and Alice take it out for a real trip. Best of all Unfortunately it’s very hard to move from one bike to another so it’ll be Mom who has the privilege of biking with her daughter.
1 Despite that, I still had to clean all the paintball markers by myself.
I got to see most of both boy’s games today. Charles went on the field at 9AM and Corwin at 10:15AM at the side of town. I ended up a little bit late but still in the first quarter. Corwin didn’t see much action, his team totally crushed the opponents, at least 10-0. The coach tried swapping in weaker players or ones who didn’t normally play offense, which was nice in one sense because two player who had never scored a goal at this level did, but still, it was so bad that eventually the coach had to tell the team “do not kick at the goal”. One of the kids who normally plays offense but was sent back to midfield to keep the scoring down took to stopping attacks by booting the ball from just the other side of the middle line back to the goalie box. One time he managed to put it in the goal from back there. I think that’s when the “no kicking at the goal” command was sent out. For the last quarter, Corwin’s team had literally only the goalie on their side of the field.
Corwin got put in on offense for a while and he did some attacking, but that requires running and hustle, two things that are not really Corwin’s “thing”. He did have some good returns while he was playing defense, but that was rare because of the lack of action on that side of the field.
The best incident, though, was near miss that bounced off the cross post. A bit disappointing but it made a cool sound.
Charles and his team did well, finally winning a game 3-2. The kids seemed to be playing better. The goalies actually picked up the ball some of the time. There were a lot more kids, enough to have 3-4 out at a time, which kept the kids fresher. There was also a kid who hadn’t played the previous games who was aggressive and skilled, scoring two of the goals. This meant also meant that instead of solo attacks, they’d go over two or (occasionally) three at a time which makes a big difference. I think the other team had fewer good players, who have a big impact on a game at age.
Because Charles was playing defense most of the game, he got a lot less action and didn’t run nearly as much. He did a good job on defense and a few saves, getting the ball away from the goal when the goalie was confused about the whole “hands” thing. On offense, Charles scored a goal, driving down by himself against 4 opponents, blasting and weaving through them. He was blocked on his first couple of kicks but persisted until he broke through the last two defenders and popped it in.
Best of all, the parents finally got organized enough to have snacks after the game. There were no snacks for the first two games, which just compounded the effect of losing. Maybe they’ll think they only get snacks if they win. Hmmmm.
We went out this evening to Corwin’s Middle School Open House. There was a picnic in a nearby park, then a presentation at the school, and then wandering of the school. We got to see Corwin’s teachers, although with the crowd we didn’t actually get to talk to them much. Two of Alice’s friends were there, Maggie and Andrew, who goes to Alice’s daycare and is her best friend. Charles spent a lot of time clinging to Mom. Corwin stayed as far from his parents as possible during the picnic but was forced to be with us at the school.
While we were at the school, Corwin made us walk the halls and frankly, I am not sure he knew where he was going but simply wandered until he got lucky and found something.
Corwin and his crew during the presentation
Tidbits from Charles —
Mom is making Corwin bike to school some days now, although not as often as she would like due to scheduling issues. Today he met up with another boy who is the son of his soccer coach for safety in numbers, or just to better guilt Corwin in to actually biking. I will admit it’s a bit awkward if Corwin has to take his violin with him. Charles’ decision to go cello looks smarter all the time.
The kids went to a birthday party for Keith’s little brother Isaac on Saturday. As part of the goody bags, they got whoopi cushions. Interestingly, while the boys had a bit of fun with them, Alice has really taken to them in a big way. I made the mistake, after having to inflate them one too many times, of teaching her how to inflate it herself. Now she proudly accepts the name “Rude Tummy Noise Girl”. Watch if you dare.
Another depressing game for Charles today with a final score of 0-8. On the one hand, not as many goals scored against them, but on the other they didn’t score at all. At least they had a good number of players so Charles was able to sit out for a quarter. I could tell the difference when he was out. The quarter he was out one of the opposing players drove in for a score four times in less than 5 minutes. Even with 4 people defending the goal, she could basically just drive through and kick it in with little difficulty. Eventually the other coach sent her back to defense to make it not quite so embarrassing. I am not sure the coach has told them that the goalie can pick up the ball, or that the goalie should stay near the goal without actually hiding inside it. As the ultimate insult, there was no snack after the game. Charles was very depressed, even though Mom took us all out for pancakes afterwards.
Charles played a very good game, make a real difference whenever he was in. He played midfield and offense, although in reality he covered defense as well. I thought about telling him not to come back so much, but if he didn’t the ball would go to the other side even less, even though there’s a girl on the team (Ana) who can put on a good drive. Charles frequently cut across to stop opponents with the ball, rather than just chasing after them which greatly improved his ability to stop an attack.
There are several other players who have some ability, but it seems like only Charles and Ana have any idea of playing style more advanced than chase the ball or stand and wait. The coaches seem a bit too laid back and don’t interact much with the kids during the game which doesn’t help with the lack of playing knowledge. Oh well.
Corwin’s game was canceled because of the heavy rains of the last day or two. The park district didn’t want their nice soccer fields stomped in to mud pits. Instead they had a scrimmage at the same set of fields as Charles’ game, which was convenient. Because Charles had a real game I watched that and only saw the end of Corwin’s game. The boy needs to get some more running in — Mom claimed she was going to make him do wind sprints.
As one of his assignments Corwin had to write down things about himself and his family, including “one interesting thing about your family”. I suggested that he note that his Dad was the smartest, handsomest, and gosh darn best liked person in the continental USA. Failing that, that his Uncle Evil is number one on Google when you search for “uncle evil”. He eventually settled on flying rockets and playing paintball, which are OK I guess but don’t really show me off to best advantage.
Charles brought home a worksheet he filled out at school about what he thought about his class. One item was “My biggest fear about this class is” to which he answered “not de understand” which he eventually translated for us as “not be understood”. He still struggles with his diction and even Mom and I have trouble understanding him now and then. This naturally makes him upset, worsening his diction in a viscous cycle that never ends well. On the other hand, his other answers were a bit more upbeat —
The hotel (Bellagio) kitty corner from ours has a large fountain show in front. I noticed it as soon as we got there, but wasn’t sure what it was, as it looked just like tracks in a pool. We thought it might be the Treasure Island pirate show, but decided that was in a different location. We eventually found it was a set of high pressure, individually controlled water jets used to put on a fountain show, which was quite nifty. From a distance the sound of the high pressure water jets firing sounded like gun fire and the first time it went off I thought we were hearing some gang warfare. Up close, as you can hear in this clip, loud music plays which luckily is hard to hear from any distance.
We had a lazy morning with a bit of shopping before getting on our plane back. It was almost uneventful, until Mom thought she’d lost her backpack going through airport security. It turned out she’d already slung it on her back, which I helpfully pointed out without laughing hard enough to draw the attention of every single person in the security area.
We flew over the Grand Canyon, of which I got a barely recognizable picture. We got home too late for Ethan to make it home and get up in time for school, so he slept in our room for one more night while we got the guest bed in the basement. The boys noticed we were back and even remembered our names, our abscence being not an exciting adventure or a personal growth experience but just a soon to be forgotten disappointment because we didn’t bring back good loot.
There was a lot of construction going on in Las Vegas. The picture is here is of a $9B or $11B project (we got conflicting stories) right on the strip. The top end there was 1000 square foot condominiums for a mere $1.2M each. A bit out of our price range — for now.
Other than that, mostly the same old, same old. The trade show actually ended in the afternoon, but because we hadn’t realized how fast everything would shut down after that we don’t have a flight back until tomorrow (although, because we took a direct flight, that may well have not been an option in any case). We had a bit of a mixup in the morning when I had apparently forgotten my exhibitor badge and had to take the long walk back to the hotel room to look for it. Turns out that Mom had taken it with her and it had been in her purse the entire time. It was very amusing, officially.
Afterwards, we were tired from the show (and the long walk for the not missing badge) but Mom, being the hardy sort that she is, set us on a long walk up and down the strip, although she did let me stop at an expensive but very nice “all you can eat” sushi buffet. I ate until I had trouble standing back up afterwards. While there, we got an offer from a guy to take our picture as a memory, but really — I had a much nicer camera. Mom thought that perhaps us looking bloated in a sushi buffet was not quite the sort of picture that would bring back warm remembrances. In exchange, we wandered various shopping venues and noticed that the faux sky ceilings were very popular. Eventually we made it back to the hotel room and crashed out.
The hotel, outside view
We made it to Las Vegas with plenty of time to spare. The trip out was long but uneventful. We’re staying at a hotel with very reasonable rates across the street from the hotel with the trade show. There’s even an elevated walkway so we don’t have to wait for traffic lights, and outdoor escalators on one side so we don’t even have to walk up. On the other hand, it is a very long walk (if indoors) over to the actual site of the conference, but Mom needs the exercise so it’s OK.
The hotel, inside view
We couldn’t check on the boys in the morning because we were on the airplane at the time, but when we landed and there were no frantic messages on our voice mail, we figured things had likely gone non-disastrously. What worried us was that Ethan had to leave before the boys got on the bus and it’s always a struggle to get them ready on time. However, both boys made it to school and back just fine. Charles had his first experience at being home alone, as he gets back earlier than Corwin. We called the boys after Corwin got home and they confirmed being alive, mostly unharmed, and in the house, but not much else. No desire to prolong a conversation with an absent parent manifested, so we left them to go on with their lives.
Mom and I are heading out to Las Vegas for a business trip / trade show. It will be our first real trade show (i.e., where we are exhibitors and not for local people we already know). Ethan will be staying here to keep an eye on the boys. Alice was taken away by Grandma for a week of fun up north (for Alice — Grandma hopefully will still be speaking to us afterwards).
We spent the day frantically trying to get everything ready to go, while the boys grumbled about having to help out. Still, we got on the road only an hour or so late, which is good for us. We should be back late Wednesday night, presuming we don’t prefer a life of ease on the Las Vegas strip, racking up the piles of cash with our mad gamblin’ skillz.
Both boys had soccer games today at the same time. It was at least at the same general location, which is unlikely to be the case in the future. I decided that since I had covered Corwin last week, I would watch Charles’ game this week.
Sadly, Charles’ team lost 1-12. I was worried initially that they wouldn’t even play because they had only 4 players about the time the game was scheduled to start. A couple of players showed up just then and so the game went on. Still, at least for one quarter the other team had 7 players while Charles’ team was only fielding 6. I don’t know if the coach couldn’t put more players in or just hadn’t notice because at least once a player just left the field to be carried off by her dad and I noticed the coach looking around for her later on.
Still, Charles played very strongly, despite the score. He played defense and offense and (unlike certain of his brothers) ran his little heart out trying to keep hope alive. I knew things weren’t looking well, though, when the other team scored 2 goals in the first five minutes and Charles was clutching his chest from exertion. But Charles rallied and played a great game. He made lots of good saves and broke up a lot of plays, but if he didn’t stop the attack, it usually didn’t get stopped by anyone else. Charles was clearly the best player on the team, which is a bit unusual for our boys. When he was on offense, he had two good runs where he took the ball down to the other goal (something rare for his team that game) even though he didn’t score. Part of that was that the rest of his team preferred to watch more than help. After one of the runs, Charles’ goal shot was stopped by an opponent booting the ball out of bounds (standard defense ploy). Charles got to throw the ball in but he didn’t have anyone to throw it to. Only one teammate was on that half of the field and he was past the goal. Charles eventually had to throw it in to the other team and hope they didn’t get to it too quickly. Despite all this Charles played hard until the end, not getting a break the whole game because the team was so short on players. At least Charles’ team scored, a good shot by the one other player who was doing well (and had to been sent back in against her will because of the shortage).
I saw the end of Corwin’s game, but since Charles’ started late I only saw a little bit of Corwin playing, which wasn’t very intersting because the team was playing better and the other side didn’t get the ball over to his side while I was watching. I think they won 3-0.
Poor Charles. We have teased so much about making big blue eyes at people to get his way that he told me the other day that he wanted to change out his blue eyes for brown, because “blue was the wrong color”. After some probing, I discovered that blue was wrong because it made us talk about Charles’ “big blue marbles”. Naturally, I reacted by suggesting that we dress Charles up as a big blue eye for Halloween. I don’t think that was as comforting as Charles might have liked. Even pointing out that Mom suffers from the same problem but has (for the most part) been able to live a normal life was ineffective. Oh well, overcoming challenges build character!
I forgot to mention last Tuesday that Corwin has advanced to TenderFoot as a Boy Scout. The troop has a “Court of Honor” once a quarter at which rank advancements and merit badges are awarded. Corwin, of course, has no idea when these are so we almost missed this one. Luckily I found the handout from the previous one which listed the time and date for this one. I have made sure to save the hand out from this one for next time.
I took Corwin to soccer practice this evening. It was drizzling a bit and Corwin said “I don’t think we’re going to have practice”. I asked him what team he thought he had been playing for all these years. His previous coach, Jack’s dad, was cut from the same cloth as his current coach. In their view, if the rain is light enough to see from one end of the field to the other, it’s not raining too hard. So unless the nearby trees were catching on fire from lightning bolts, practice was on.
While I was there I got in to a discussion about keeping middle school boys clean. It started when one parent groused that his kid was going to claim he didn’t need a shower because he had been rained on. I thought he was kidding, but that’s exactly what Corwin told me on the way home. All I can say is that I am glad the Boy Scout code includes the requirement that Boy Scouts be clean.
Alice has acquired a habit of coming in to my office now and then and announcing “I still like you Daddy”. What she means by this is “I want to watch videos on your computer”. Apparently my little discussion with her on how I wasn’t much interested in showing videos to children who didn’t like me had some effect. Just not quite the one I wanted.
Polynomial has become a problem for out local food supply. She still likes POset’s food much better than her own. No matter how asleep she is, if the clink of cat food hitting the bowl goes out, Poly will answer the call. If she’s awake, just the sound of the cat food container being opened. It’s getting hard to keep POset fed because we can’t leave out any food for her.
Poly is also mastering the counters and tupperware. We can no longer leave food on the kitchen counters, even in a container. Poly can get it off the counter and pop open the container. She got most of a box of brownies last night. So now it’s closing the pantry and putting food on top of the refrigerator for us. I suggested a child gate for the kitchen but Mom wasn’t willing to go that far.
