Weekend Away

This weekend, Vic and I got to go away from home to celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary. Okay it wasn't quite a full weekend. Gina had a soccer game on Saturday and so we didn't get home from that until 2pm. Then it took another 2 hours to finally get out of the house. It wasn't even a full 24 hours away from home, more like 20 hours, but who's counting. We didn't even go far away, just down the road to Los Gatos. But we had a nice hotel room for the evening, we had a very nice dinner at Forbes Mill Steakhouse, a restaurant we had never been to before, and most important of all, no kids. We got to admire other peoples kids (there is no shortage of kids and dogs in Los Gatos). I thought about calling my mom to see how things were going, but didn't until the next day. Turns out, they were angels, angels who got to go to the toy store. So they had a good weekend too. We need to do this more often.

Soccer Class

Andrew has been really looking forward to taking a soccer class. It must have something to do with watching big sister sign up for a soccer team and wear a uniform. In the morning he was ready to go with his shin guards and soccer socks. He insisted on wearing a shirt with a number on it, because you have to have a number on your shirt to play soccer.

He had a lot of fun running around with the soccer ball. It was a warm morning and bad mommy forgot the water bottle so after half an hour, he was ready to go home and get something to drink. He can't wait until the next class.

Gina and Dylan did a good job playing together during Andrew's class and posing together on a rock for pictures.

Chocolate Milk

With the first kid, you try really hard to feed them only good food and very little junk. I think Gina was three before she started to realize that you could get sweetened milk whenever we would go to Starbucks. At first I only got her regular milk. Then we (thanks to Auntie Alice) would get her milk colored pink with a few drops of raspberry syrup. By the age of 3 she was ordering her own drink: pink milk with two pumps.

By the time Andrew was two he knew all about the boxes of chocolaty goodness that were in Starbucks and he would make a beeline to the case to pick out his box. I would have to make sure he didn't start drinking it right away because otherwise he would be done before my drink was ready. Once the box was empty, it was time to go.

Now Dylan has discovered chocolate milk. At Easter the kids had boxes of chocolate milk and several were left partly full on the table. So he helped himself. Now when he sees one of those boxes of milk, he knows that it is something he must have.

Persistence

Andrew is persistent. A couple of weeks ago when he had a major tantrum. He had spilled cereal all over the floor and then refused to pick it up. He was mad that I insisted that he clean up the cereal so he started screaming. For 45 minutes. At some point he did clean up the mess but he was still ticked off so he kept on screaming. If he had the words, I think he would have been swearing. Instead, he settled for shrieking at the top of his voice. I finally booted him outside so he wouldn't wake up Dylan taking a nap. Once outside he eventually was distracted and started to play with Gina.

With ice skating, persistence is definitely an asset. I am amazed at how much Andrew likes ice skating. I try to get them to the rink early so that Andrew has time to practice before class. He gets out on the ice and slowly makes his way across. He tries to keep up with Gina but she is faster and steadier. He falls down quite a bit still, more than Gina ever did when she was first learning, but he easily gets up each time and tries again.


Here is a video of the kids skating, first Gina with Noemi and Julian having fun forming a train and then Andrew doing his thing.

First Haircut

I finally got around to taking the kids in for haircuts. Gina's hair was getting pretty long, Andrew's hair was to his shoulder when wet, and Dylan had some pretty long ringlets. Both Gina and Andrew sat in the chair patiently while watching a video and their haircuts didn't take too long.

Then it was Dylan's turn. I sat him in the chair and the woman put the drape over him. He started to tug at it with a look that said he didn't like it, but that was it. He sat patiently while his hair was sprayed, all the knots and snags were brushed out (I hadn't brushed it out completely in quite awhile) and then snip, snip, little black tufts fell to the floor.

He looks so different with short hair. I miss all the little ringlets on top of his head but I guess they will grow back.