Billiards a Java Joe's

Last Music Makers class til next fall. For the first time, we sat through it and even took some photos and movies. Sam correctly identified an English horn, and knows was pizzicato is. I sure didn't at that age! More importantly, he got to conga-line around the room with shakers, and later whack wooden blocks together. Fun stuff.

Then we went across the street for lunch at Java Joe's. It's a fun place with gritty jazz and all sorts of colorful paintings on the walls. We sat at the counter facing the sidewalk and watched people as we ate. Afterward we went downstairs to use the restrooms and Sam noticed the pool table. So we spent a buck and played a round. Sam was a little short for the cue, so we let him use his hand. He has asked us about 25 times now when he gets to go back to Jumping John's or Jingle Jack's--it changes every time.

Went from there to a city playground which won awards when it was built in the 60s. Has some interesting structures.

Other than that, a quiet weekend. Sam and I wandered the grounds a little, wading in the creek and using the swings and generally loitering. While out, we saw another Baltimore oriole, a big pileated woodpecker, a dam downstream which looks almost certainly like the work of a beaver, and a run-over rabbit. Of four of these, the one he wanted to take mommy to see was the roadkill.

Well, I'm not sure he really saw the oriole or the woodpecker. He also missed the hawk being chased out of our yard by the crows. But he got to see the dove's nest in our front yard. Spring is just busting out all over, here in Penfield.

He's really getting into the wooden marble racer, which is a lot of fun. He's building structures which are more creative than anything his parents come up with. One of them is pictured here. The marble rolls to the left, the the right, then into a completely enclosed tunnel. Fun stuff.

I'm away for a week. I don't think he gets that, and I am grateful for it.

a good weekend, millipede and all

This was a buggy weekend.

Saturday afternoon I worked on the back yard clearing debris, putting in two miniature rosebushes and prepping for annuals.

The whole time--a couple of hours--Sam puttered outside in the back yard, which was a perfect antidote to the wild mood swings of the ferocious fours.

Have you heard of this? The FFs are least as bad as the Terrible Twos. Sam's teacher, Ms. Mulvaney, says that kids generally go through a very rebellious phase around 4 yrs old, lasting less than a year. Describes Sam to a tee. He'll be fine one day (or all last week, as it turns out), then the next he'll be fighting us at every turn. Sunday morning he was writhing on the floor howling in protest at our cruel attempts to feed and clothe him. Poor guy.

Apparently a real problem with the FF's is that when the child enters this phase and starts acting like a maniac, the parents are loathe to mention it to other parents, for fear theirs is the only child with early-onset insanity. So the parents suffer in solitude, at least until someone tips them off. So when we are in a group of other kids Sam's age--as we were at the birthday party on Sunday--we are always very happy to see the other kids showing the same behavior as Sam.

Back to Saturday, you can see Sam with a little bug container he got in the bug collection kit given him by a friend at work. (My work, not his.) There's a potato bug in there. And in a similar little container which actually has a bug-sized maze, he had a centipede crawling around. Foreshadowing of bugs to come, as it turns out. Sam also wandered around with a magnifying glass I gave him. Besides actually looking at things, he pried the 3" lens out and used it to slice dandelions.

Sunday Sam went to a birthday party at the zoo. About 20 other kids [*] were there for it. It was Zoo-hosted, so it was in a conference room. They had pizza and cake and made a "craft" (putting colored sand in a plastic necklace thingy) and crayoned the paper tablecloths--but the real highlight was the staff worker who showed them a ball python, a hedgehog and a millipede. We learned some new things: Millipedes eat decaying vegetable matter, as opposed to centipedes, which eat other bugs. So whereas centipedes are venomous, millipedes are poisonous--i.e., only dangerous if you eat them. And while centipedes move quickly, the better to catch bugs, millipedes, which only have to stalk stalks, move slowly.

They are still disgusting.

Shown in the photo is Sam sitting next to Alicia, another FF, even then contemplating wickedness.

On the way back from the Zoo Sam also let us know that magic is different from miracles, and why. He had learned about the feeding of the 5,000 that morning (complete with goldfish crackers--which, being a bread-like product, conveniently play the role of both the loaves and the fishes), and the excellent Mrs. Cok, his teacher, had managed to clear up that distinction for him. He also noted happily that both words begin with M.

In Children In Worship (where he goes during the worship service, after the children's sermon) Sam learned from Mrs. Smith a fun game which he was very eager to play the rest of the day: Tisket, Tasket, Who's in Paul's Basket. In this game one person covers his or her eyes while another is chosen to hide in the basket, covered by a blanket, with only feet sticking out. The first person then has to guess, based on footwear, who the person in the basket it. We don't think it teaches anything theological, unless you somehow tie it to Ruth's uncovering of Boaz's feet, a connection Sam's a little young for.

The game does prefigure all the fun we hope Sam will have in the world to come (which Susan did the children's sermon on Sunday). And it made for a very good time Sunday evening.

[*] 20 kids at the birthday party = ~$300 worth of gifts.

It snowed Mother's Day morning

Came down this morning with Sam and we were both pretty excited to see snow falling, and not tiny little flakes, either. No accumulation, but it was still a sight.

What happened this weekend?

Sam got NEW SANDALS. They have little LEDs which light up as he walks, and he couldn't be more thrilled. They even came with a little comic book which he has carried around happily all weekend long.

So you might be surprised to find out that he railed against me Saturday when I changed my mind and decided not to take him into Target where he thought he could wheedle me into buying him a toy. I think because I didn't immediately, when he suggested it, say, "NO, NEVER," he thought there was a chance, and therefore it was his right. Sigh. Hard never to be the guy making the decisions, I guess.

But Sam was a good little helper in buying some roses for mommy at the garden store while 40 mph winds rattled the greenhouse roof. And he surprised me by putting some real elbow grease into dusting the dashboard of the van, the other of Susan's two Mother's Day gifts.

Four is a mercurial age. This afternoon we took him to his first classical music concert at Eastman. Beforehand there was a "craft" for the kids (and where all the over-achieving parents got to eye one another edgily).
The concert itself was great. Selections from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, then selections from Stravinsky's Firebird, complete with a shadow puppet show in the background. They knew their audience, and not only had a stand-up-and-get-the-wiggles-out intermission in the middle of the 45-minute program, but prior to Firebird instructed the audience that if anyone needed to, he or she should find a "big person" to hug if the monsters got too scary.

Afterward I asked Sam which part he liked best and he said "All of it!" and asked when we could go again. :-)

So why mercurial? Fast forward to 7:55 p.m. and a boy who is tired and out of resources knocks over a tower of blocks by mistake (Sam and tower, pre-disaster, shown above), yells at mommy for the injustice inherent in the universe, and yells, "WORST DAY EVER!"

Some days it's hard being four.

* * *

Oh: Sam is shown with a toy he earned doing chores. It's a set of straws and rubber or plastic connectors. Fun stuff.

Each evening at dinner Sam prays for Xochitl, and asks God to "please bear up Joel." Don't know why, but when he spontaneously started saying that both Susan and I had to struggle to keep from grinning. (Not at the subject of the prayer, but at his repeating my phrase.) And as of today, he even knows what that means.

* * *

P.s.: He's now hooked on the 70s TV show Land of the Lost.

Rochester's Hidden Taxidermy Treasure Trove

A little more wildlife this weekend! Saturday Sam and I went to a park we'd never been to. More of a nature preserve, really. Beautiful boardwalk paths through native woods. And half a dozen amazingly tame deer strolling through the middle of the woods. We got quite close to them before they darted another dozen feet away and kept eating. Fun for Sam to see.

It had a nature center with a vast array of display cases of mostly stuff animals native to the area, and some live ones, including several snakes and turtles. (Sam's shown next to the stuffed coyote.) Sam was DELIGHTED.

You can also see Sam lying on the path, insisting on needing a rest. Mind you I had him on my shoulders for a good part of the walk, which wasn't more than a mile. This is the same kid who, last summer, practically sprinted a hike up at camp which was more than a mile long.

Which leads me to believe that, for little boys, running takes no energy; lack of interest, though, is exhausting. Once he'd seen what the path had to offer, suddenly the thought of exploring further was enough to make him noodle-kneed. If I asked him to walk someplace truly boring, he'd probably enter a coma.

While out playing by the creek in the dusk this evening, we saw a nice, large frog, also shown. It didn't flee when we got close, which makes Susan think it was a female near some eggs.

Oh! And for those of you who were thinking of calling Social Services about the noose swing out back, you'll be glad to know we have a new swing. Now that the swing count is up to two, Sam's spending a lot of time out back, and even Huckleberry-Finning it up in the muddy creek. The new swing is a disk swing, which is harder for him to clamber onto, but a little less likely to be exhibit A in a marmoset lynching.

Bet you didn't think you'd read that phrase today