The very next day after we returned from our driving trip to west Texas was Thanksgiving. We invited the McKee-Starling clan over for a laid back dinner. Sean had bought as much as we thought we could of the dinner items before we left for our trip, and he made a quick trip to get the last few items Wednesday night after driving all day from Fort Davis.

Ian made sure he got to sit by Ruby

The kids played and Sean kept an eye on them while I basically cooked all day on Thursday. It was kind of relaxing. The Woodses and the McKee-Starlings have been friends for a very long time, and we all have younger kids, and neither of us, intentionally or otherwise, place any pressure on the other. Holly had even told me earlier – if the choice is potatoes or a nap, take the nap.

The menu worked out pretty well. Holly brought chocolate-pecan pie, purple sweet potato casserole, and a really delicious tray full of pickled items. We had turkey pastrami, turkey leg confit, Sean’s mom’s cornbread dressing, gravy, creamed Brussels sprouts, green bean and fennel salad, melting potatoes, and a holiday cocktail called Lindsey’s Lament (which was great).

We have a slight improvement on Lindsey’s Lament to report. Here are the new directions, according to Sean and Chris: 1. mix cocktail, 2. give a crisp high five to Ruby (because she’s awesome, obviously), 3. accidentally knock entire cocktail into the decimated contents of the pickle tray, 4. insist that the now salty, pickle juicy liquid be dumped back in the cocktail glass, 5. pass around for tasting because holy crap, it was incredible.

I love it because Maui and Elsa look like they’re ready to do battle in the Christmas tree.

The next day, we went out and procured our Christmas tree. Ian had fun running around the tree lot, hiding. We tried letting Maya choose the tree, but I think she would have gone home with one of the 12-footers, so we had to reel her in.

Saturday was kind of our big deal event. We took the kids up to Cedar Park to ride a train, which is something Maya had been asking to do. But this wasn’t just any train – it was the North Pole Flyer. We were on the train for two hours, but it hardly felt like it. We were given hot cocoa. Mrs Claus came by and offered cookies. Elves visited for caroling and balloon twisting. Even Santa came by to hear the kids’ wishes, offer them a small gift (their very own train whistle), and sit for photos.

Maya and her dimple (and her dad)

Partway through the train ride, we were told that there was an open window between two compartments if the kids wanted to poke their heads out and feel the breeze. Now, I feel like I was warned against this sort of thing over and over again during my childhood, but I let it go, and both the kids had a great deal of fun, looking out the window and grabbing a big face full of breeze.

Ian LOVES to cook

The next event in our action packed November/December was Sean’s birthday. Since his birthday fell on a Monday, the kids and I baked his cake the Saturday before. Sunday after lunch, we sang happy birthday and cut into it. It was a day early, but why not?? It’s a good thing we did, too because shortly thereafter, things took a turn.

We were scheduled for haircuts Sunday afternoon. The kids had fun romping around and playing on some chairs shaped like giant hands beforehand. They were chatty and affable when we went in to see the lady who cuts our hair. And then suddenly, Ian was upset. He didn’t feel good, his clothes bothered him, he just wanted to be held. It was so sudden and so intense, we decided to forego the visit to Santa we had planned for after our haircuts.

Little dude was sick and wanted nothing more than to snuggle

Ian was sad all the way home, and Sean had barely gotten him to our front door, when the poor kid vomited. We were one wrong choice away from barfing on Santa Claus. Sean stayed home with Ian on Monday, and thus spent his actual birthday napping on the couch with his sick son. While we hoped it was just a 24-hour thing, Ian wound up not going back to school till Friday. For him, the vomiting stopped pretty quickly, but he had some horrible gut pain that kept him from eating much or even doing much. Five days he was down with his intestinal virus.

So many, many things to discuss with Santa.

Thursday night, we worked in our visit to Santa. The kids were elated, of course. Ian told him he wanted a jack-in-the-box shaped like an octopus. Maya gathered intel on Santa’s cookie preferences and let him know that her Oddipuddy was falling apart and that she’d really like to have a new stripy octopus.

Ian’s winter recital was on Friday, his first day back to school after The Virus. You could tell he didn’t have much energy though. He sang all the songs and more or less did all the hand motions, but he spent most of the program sitting on the floor with the younger kids.

Ian and I dancing during his preschool program.

He and Maya had their solo instrument recitals on Saturday afternoon. Ian seemed like he was feeling quite a bit better by then, but Maya’s behavior was … difficult. Still, both she and Ian played their pieces beautifully. Maya played London Bridge with two hands and Ian played one of his introductory Twinkle rhythms.

Everybody went back to school on Monday and Tuesday, but when I picked Maya up from school, she was sitting on a bench complaining of stomach upset. She vomited in the car on the way to Ian’s swim class. I went ahead and took Ian to his class, but Maya spent that 30 minutes laying on my lap and avoiding contact with other people.

Maya’s intestinal virus was horrible. Unlike Ian, she vomited nearly every day. She’d feel good for a while, we’d think she was better, then the tummy pain would return and blammo! more barf. She was vomit free for a full day before Ian’s birthday party, so we let her celebrate with him. That afternoon, she felt worse than ever. It went on and on like that. When the dust settled, she had been sick for I think eleven days. She missed seven days of school. She lost about 10% of her body weight.

She just looks worn out decorating those cookies.

The worst part though was that Maya had a hard time enjoying the things we did. We painted and decorated ornaments to give to grandparents and Anna. We baked and decorated cookies for Santa. We hunted every morning for Trinket, our damned Elf on the Shelf. She told me one day that her face hadn’t been happy in a really long time, and she was right. Maya is a joyful child, and she absolutely loves Christmas. But the constant tummy pain and difficulty holding food down for such a long time had kind of defeated her.

Luckily, nostalgia works for kids even better than for grown-ups it seems. When you talk to her about it now, she seems to be filled with fond memories of the fun things we did and the neat gifts she has received. I feel like we had been kind of keeping up and holding our own through most of our holiday and birthday crazy, but The Virus just about defeated me too, even though I never managed to really get sick. It’s hard to watch your kids suffer, while you stand there powerless, offering sips of water and a bucket to barf in. Arranging childcare for sick kids right around the holidays was a bit of a dance too, and the kids always wanted me to help them instead of their babysitter. It was a very long few weeks.

Lucky Santa

Here are some of the things that I’m thankful for through all of that. We managed to get the kids to all their recitals and Christmas programs. Ian and to some extent Maya were able to enjoy Ian’s birthday party. I was on call for jury duty through November and December and was never selected to appear in court. Everyone was well by the time we boarded our flight for the holiday family visit. Things were bad, sure, but they could have been worse.

This year, with Maya starting kindergarten, we have had to adapt to her school calendar. One thing that had shocked me was that they get the entire week off for Thanksgiving. Back in my day, I think we only got Thanksgiving and the day after, but whatever. Not one to let an opportunity pass by, I figured this was a good chance for us to try our kids out on a small road trip to the wilds of west Texas.

Family photo at the end of the Grapevine Hills Trail at Big Bend National Park

It wouldn’t be a Woods vacation without someone vomiting, or at least being terribly sick. Maya had been steadily brewing one of her grade-A snot and horrible coughing viruses, and it seemed to have come to a head the night before we were to leave. Our plan had been to take her to her early morning swim lesson on Saturday and then head out on our adventure.

Alas, after listening to the poor kid coughing all night, we let Maya sleep as late as she could and took our sweet time getting out the door. It didn’t help that I had failed to bake Maya a birthday cake the night before, so I did it Saturday morning while we were packing.

In an effort to finally get our asses out the door, we tested out letting the kids eat fast food in the car while we drove. In the past, this has not worked out, but not this day. It worked out great! Both the kids are now in very upright seats (Maya, a booster and Ian, a car seat) with cup holders. I had given them each a quarter sheet pan to use as a makeshift table top. They ate their food and drank their drinks and played with their shitty plastic fast-food toys and all was good.

Until Maya had a coughing fit, that is. It was epic. I don’t know how long that poor kid was hacking in the back seat, but it end with her yarking up a bunch of phlegm and some portion of her lunch. And she got her seat a bit too, so Sean had to do a quick clean up. If you’ve kept up with this blog, then you know that Sean is now a “cleaning barf from a car seat” expert, given his extensive experience.

Our intention had been to stop over at Enchanted Rock and let the kids go for a hike to help break up the trip. Unfortunately, that park has become wildly popular, and they stopped allowing cars in already at mid-morning. It was probably for the best that we couldn’t take sick girl on a hike, but I at least was disappointed.

The remainder of our drive went pretty smoothly. The kids enjoyed seeing the fluffy white cotton fields, the graceful turbines of the wind farms, and fields of pumpjacks working away, metal mantis-like creatures endlessly dipping their heads for another drink of crude. The sunset was beautiful as we headed into Odessa. Weird flames dotted the horizon here and there from the various refining and processing plants, reminding us yet again we were in oil country. Without our hike, we managed to get into town just in time for dinner. (A dinner which sadly was NOT Waffle House. Reference quote from Tin Cup in the title.)

We usually let the kids share a queen bed, but with Maya’s awful cough, we folded out the couch into a bed and split them up. You can tell that they’re young and everything is fascinating to them, because they were actually fighting over who would get to sleep in the fold-out bed. You wouldn’t hear a grown-up gunning for that particular privilege. The kids love hotels, but this one was especially awesome because once the couch bed was folded out, they were left with a pile of couch cushions that they figured out how to arrange into a makeshift building against one of the beds. They took turns building and hiding in their couch cushion forts until finally we all had to get to bed.

Maya sledding down a sand dune

The next day, Maya’s actual birthday, we loaded up the car and drove the maybe 35 minutes or so to Monahans Sandhills State Park. After paying our park admission and renting our disc sleds, the park ranger handed us a nub of wax and we drove out to the dunes. We started out on a small hill, mostly because the kids’ excitement couldn’t be contained and it was close. We waxed the bottom of Maya’s sled and down the little hill she went. She LOVED it. After seeing that Maya had survived, Ian gave it a shot too. More smiles and laughs!

Ian sledding down the sand dune

They only slid down the hill a couple times before they were both clamoring for a big hill. I couldn’t tell you how often we trudged up that soft-sanded dune, but we rode down again and again in various individual and stacked permutations. Ian seemed to prefer riding down on an adult’s lap, while Maya was more content to go it alone. She even accidentally rolled head over heels at least once and popped up laughing. We spent an easy hour and a half sledding away. Then at the end, we all sat at a picnic table and enjoyed Maya’s on-the-road chocolate cookie shaped cake.

Our next stop for vacation was Terlingua so that Maya could have her dinner at the Starlight Theatre and we’d be in a good place to explore Big Bend National Park the next day. After an unremarkable lunch in the city of Monahans, we headed out for the roughly three hour drive. This part of Texas is not densely populated so services are few and far between. Both kids will now at least tolerate a pit stop behind a bush along a 75 mile-per-hour highway.

There was still a bit of daylight left when we rolled into Terlingua. We checked into our hotel and drove to the restaurant fairly early, but it was no use; there was a 90 minute wait. We tried to talk Maya out of it, but apparently we had done such a good job of getting her excited about the place that she wouldn’t hear of changing venues. I’m sure the musicians on the porch and friendly dogs running around didn’t hurt.

The kids thought these stools were a crack-up

It was her birthday, so we decided to wait it out if that’s what she really wanted to do. We killed some time wandering around and checked out a few of the old ghost town ruins for a bit. Unfortunately, that didn’t take as long as we had hoped. As a parent, you sometimes get this hazy, sweet image in your head of you child happily enjoying her special birthday dinner and topping it off with a two-scoop special birthday sundae with pecans on top, everybody feeling celebratory and content.

That’s not what happened here. I don’t believe in omens, but if I did, I’d have clued in when the sweet doggie we had been petting earlier ran up to us coated in what can only be described as liquefied cow shit. Nobody pooped their pants – the omen wasn’t quite that literal – but dinner did not go smoothly. Worse still, the birthday girl seemed to have a miserable time. I guess between the long drive and the long wait, it was just too much, even for a newly turned six-year-old.

To top it off, poor Maya had a rough night full of coughing fits and gasping breaths. For her, this was the worst night of the trip. None of us got much sleep and so we didn’t get going nearly as early as we had intended. After a trying breakfast with two antsy kids, we headed into Big Bend National Park.

Maya’s photos from the Window View area

The thing about this park is that it’s huge. Sean and I have been a couple times before, and we are all too aware that it cannot be adequately experienced in a single day. However, we figured the kids wouldn’t be into it for multiple days so we narrowed our plan to a few specific sites. With our late start and the way the ol’ Prius was vibrating over the washboarded dirt road that was the “short” route to Santa Elena canyon, we decided to cut out that part of our visit. This was a real downer because it’s our favorite part of the park. The kids were fixated on the mountains though, so that’s what we homed in on. We took them up to the Chisos Mountain Lodge area where they got their feet wet with the very short Window View Trail. It’s a 0.4 mile loop that’s paved. I’m not even sure you can honestly call it a hike. The kids loved it though. Maya had fun taking photos, and I think Ian had fun being her subject. And we saw two of the fabled black bears at the edge of the parking lot!

At this point, Maya and Ian desperately wanted to climb up the mountains, so we kind of lucked into letting them. After a snack lunch at a picnic table near the lodge, we tried the Grapevine Hills trail. It’s an out and back trail, about a mile in each direction. The first 3/4 of a mile is more or less flat with the last 1/4 mile being pretty steep. They did it! Well, Maya did it. Ian enjoyed a piggyback ride for maybe a quarter of a mile or so on the flat part on the way there, and later on Sean picked him up for a few minutes on the way back out. But little dude climbed all the hard parts (I suspect that was his favorite part). The hike was beautiful. Red-orange boulders with aquamarine cactus paddles lined our path and of course, there’s the neat balanced rock at the end. Both the kids wanted us to get out from under it for fear it would fall.

All the loveys came along for the Grapevine Hills hike.

After all that hiking and climbing, the kids were shot, so we decided to drive out so we could show them the back side of the window view they had seen earlier that day. On our way there, we saw people randomly stopped in the road. Pausing to investigate, we discovered they had found a tarantula! Some of our friends find them in their houses. We have never seen one outside of captivity. It was HUGE. I wish I had thought to put down something next to it for scale. It was easily larger than my hand. Unfortunately, we were holding up traffic and couldn’t stay long enough to really compose the photo.

We did see the back of our window view, and then we headed out for the long drive to Marfa, seeing a strange and beautiful sunset as we drove. We were all too tired by the time we got to our AirBNB to do too much beyond getting settled in, so we didn’t go seek out the legendary Marfa lights. The AirBNB was an artist’s property, and care had been taken in decorating it. I wish I had thought to snap a few photos of the place. There were paintings and interesting furnishings. Little accents paid homage to the west Texas vibe – cow horns, tumble weeds, cowboy hats. The kids loved it, of course. They each had little twin beds in a room together and were excited to sleep there.

We took it really easy the next morning. The place was comfortable and there was room to let the kids play a bit. The only sour note was that apparently the propane tank was empty, so I had a very cold shower. The owner of the place tried hard to make it right. She got the tank filled in pretty short order and told us to stay later if we wanted. We did take advantage of the later departure time, leisurely packing the car and letting the kids romp around and play hide and seek for a while. They even got to visit the goat and horse that lived in the lot behind the house.

Maya and Ian, relaxing on the porch of our Marfa AirBNB

It turns out that Tuesday is NOT the day to be in Marfa. Most everything is closed. I had loose ideas of experiencing some of the arty culture in the area, but instead we had a late lunch and drove out to the Marfa Prada installation. It is singularly weird seeing a Prada store sitting out there alone in the wide open plain with the desert scrub around it, 75 mile an hour traffic tearing past, the occasional tumble weed rolling through. There’s a kind of open mesh fencing around the place, onto which people have attached all manner of items: locks, toys, photos, even a pair of children’s shoes. Maya the photographer had a ton of fun snapping photos of some of the items and of her brother posing in front of the Prada. Ian had fun NOT sitting in the car for a change.

After that, we drove on into Fort Davis, taking the scenic route through the Davis Mountains. Once in Fort Davis, we checked into our hotel and had just a few minutes to settle in before heading out for an early dinner before our big event of the day. This was one of the better meals of our trip. The Fort Davis Drug Store and Hotel, among many other things, sports an old fashioned soda fountain where we had chocolate malts and cherry cokes and delicious burgers. Ian the burger hater, had delicious chicken strips instead.

Hobby-Eberly Telescope

After dinner, we drove to the McDonald Observatory to attend one of their star parties. We weren’t sure how our just-turned-six and not-quite-four year old kids would manage. We arrived maybe twenty minutes before show time and really didn’t doodle around too long before we all paraded out to the amphitheater for a lecture. The night was clear and cold and the lecture was concise. They chatted about the things we would see later through the telescopes – binary stars, a nebula, and a distant star cluster … the moon. They talked about how the International Space Station would be passing by on its orbit in a few minutes. They used a big laser-pointer to give us a constellation tour. Ian fidgeted, pronounced the talk boring, and played with rocks. Maya danced around alternately chanting “telescope” and “constellation.”

At the right moment, our lecturer’s phone cued him that it was ISS time. There were several hundred of us out in that amphitheater and all of us were watching for a few brief minutes as it moved through the sky. It looked like a fast-moving star, reflected sunlight making it appear bright white in the sky. Then it fell back into Earth’s shadow and to our eyes disappeared. Maya took a while to find it, but once she did, her excitement was obvious. Even Ian managed to see it.

We went all around looking through various telescopes. You could always tell when Maya finally spotted whatever she was meant to be seeing because she’d shriek, “I see it!!!” It was tougher to tell if Ian saw what he was meant to see. One of the telescopes was trained on the moon though, and he definitely got a good look at that. Ian has a nightlight that can be changed to show a number of different scenes, and ever since our visit to the observatory, it’s been dialed in to look like the moon. Partway through, we went inside to visit the gift shop and warm up a bit. After going back out and looking through a few more telescopes, we loaded up in the car for the dark drive back to our hotel.

McDonald Observatory

We were originally planning to get up, have breakfast, and drive home, but we had had such a great experience at the observatory, that we decided to drive back up there in the daylight to wander around and take some photos. It was a beautiful day. The kids had fun tromping around outside and looking at the various BIIIG telescopes. We were even able to go inside and look around at the huge Hobby-Eberly telescope, which I believe we were told is the fifth largest telescope in the world.

While the view from way up high was amazing, we eventually had to give up and drive home. Sean was a man on a mission. I offered to drive more than once, but we all know he makes better time than I do. As I recall, the drive was completely uneventful. We said goodbye to the mountains, goodbye to the desert, and goodbye to the big wind turbines as we barreled along the highway.

Maya’s activity for today: painting the solar system string of lights she picked up from the McDonald Observatory gift shop

Was this trip a good idea? I’m still debating that. Maya and Ian really enjoyed all the things we did, but there was a lot of driving time. And because they had so much sitting and waiting time in the car, if there was sitting and waiting time for anything else, it was torture. They were hell on wheels in a restaurant. Ultimately, I think we all appreciate the experiences we collected, but would shoot for a better experience to drive time ratio in the future.

On November 18th, Maya turned 6. We celebrated by riding down sand dunes on sleds and eating cake in a park in 40-degree weather. We all had a great time, but more on that later.

They’re strategizing about how to blow out the candles without Maya smelling fire. I’m not kidding.

Because Thanksgiving was so early this year, we decided to actually celebrate Maya’s birthday a week early to avoid a bunch of kids being out of town for Thanksgiving travel. Unfortunately, about the time I managed to get the “room parent” to send email to the class list inviting everyone in her kindergarten class to the party, Maya came home with a physical invitation to one of her best friend’s birthday party for the SAME DATE.

F-bombs were dropped. Luckily, I was able to call the place we had booked and could move her party to Sunday instead of Saturday. I scurried to send Maya to school with physical invitations with the change in date and pestered her class’s room parent to send out an updated email.

Playing with her friend, Teagan.

Despite everything, quite a few of her friends showed up. The date change messed with a few and illnesses with a few more, but it was still big enough to be a celebration. I honestly think Maya was a little worn out from going to a party on Saturday and then another on Sunday, but all in all, I think she had a good time.

You know who really loved Maya’s party? Ian, that’s who. That little guy was like a pink streak tearing around the Catch Air “jumpy place” where Maya had her party. He climbed up all kinds of things he probably has no business climbing and doing it like a boss.

Ian LOVED Maya’s party.

The gifts from Maya’s classmates were really cute. Most of them made cards for the packages, nearly all of which featured octopuses. What has turned out to be one of the most interesting gifts is a very soft, light green dinosaur-type thing. Maya has decided that he is Oddipuddy’s friend, and she had dubbed him Mr Squishyhead. Mr Squishyhead sleeps with Oddipuddy and keeps him company while Maya is at school. He checks some of Oddipuddy’s more destructive impulses. He even went on vacation with Oddipuddy.

From left to right: Mr Squishyhead, Maya, Oddipuddy

Six year old Maya is going to be a force. She’s lately been writing letters to her classmates, teacher, and grandparents on neat stationery she received for her birthday. She’s been trying to read books to her brother. She builds legos like a champ and has been making interesting art for ages. As always, it will be interesting to see what this year brings.

Back in October, Maya and Ian had their school photos. We only recently received Maya’s. Man, did preschool spoil us. The company that did the photos got the kids to smile fun, natural smiles (even Maya, which is a trick) and had them do multiple poses. Not so with elementary school. It was the standard single shot, and Maya was clearly left to her own devices to figure out how to smile. Either way, the photos are cute.

Maya – Kindergarten (age 5)

Maya continues to do well in kindergarten. Her report card (how funny is that??) was great. Her teacher is convinced she behaves very well. She has friends that she refers to by name and actively looks forward to seeing and playing with. She will often tell me that she has a hard time sitting still, but that she tries to be like her friend Ruthie who behaves very well. She’s come home with stories of computer lab and PE and doing art in “center time” and caterpillars turning into chrysalises and on and on.

Ian – 3 years old

Ian is coming into his own. He often still plays the way Maya wants to play, but more and more he is asserting himself. And he has definitely found his legs physically. That kid can GO. He runs, he climbs, he throws, he rides. It is so much fun watching his confidence and enthusiasm explode. And slowly, we are figuring out his interests outside of “anything Maya loves, Ian loves too.” We can often find him giggling out loud over Peppa Pig’s antics. He’s watched a gingerbread man cartoon lately too which led him to ask me if we could bake gingerbread cookies together. He is worried they’ll run away though, so he has asked that we keep the door locked.

All in all, I think we’re doing pretty well. And I think we are even keeping up through all the crazy birthday and holiday stuff!! Okay, no we aren’t, but we’re having fun anyway.

Our kids joined the Frozen bandwagon a little late. We had tried to show them the movie maybe a year or two ago, but it never really caught on. I can’t even remember why at this point, but Sean started playing the soundtrack for them and wow, were they hooked. Maya still regularly requests the music, and Ian sings along to most of it.

Getting ready to go to the preschool carnival

Ian decided pretty early on that he wanted to be Anna from Frozen. Maya, being the great big sister that she is, figured she’d be Elsa to go with his Anna. It was with much glee that I ordered costumes from Amazon and called it a day. Big checkmark beside the Halloween costume box on my to do list.

The kids made decorations and then insisted the ALL be hung in their rooms

As usual, nanny Anna (not the be confused with Frozen Anna) drew the designs on the kids’ jack-o-lanterns, I gutted and carved, and Sean lit the candles. They were easy on me this year. Ian decided to go traditional and Maya wanted a ghost. And Anna chose designs that weren’t too fiddly. Ian painted a pumpkin at preschool. So that Maya wouldn’t feel left out, we let her paint a pumpkin at home.

Jack-o-lanterns!

These kids have had an action-packed holiday. This past Friday, we went to Ian’s school carnival. The folks at his preschool rent all sorts of inflatable bounce houses and climbing structures. They get local businesses to sponsor booths at the event. They raise money for a good cause (this year it was Austin Pets Alive). Maya and Ian had a ball running over and over again through bouncy obstacle courses, bouncy ball pits, bouncy slides, you name it. They both learned pretty early on that it’s no fun trying to climb and run and jump in a long dress, so neither of them stayed in costume for very long.

On Saturday afternoon, we went to Dolphin Fest at Maya’s school, which is basically their fall fundraiser event. Sean and I had planned to devote an hour. I think we were there for somewhere between two and three. It was an emotional roller coaster. The kids laughed, they cried, the won some things, they tried to cope with not always winning everything. Maya scored a photo booth photo with her beloved kindergarten teacher.

Ian bouncing at his carnival

Also, by Saturday, it was downright hot. We were out in the full sun for a couple hours, feeling certain we were getting burnt (amazingly, we didn’t). By the time we got home, we were all beat. We threw on a fun halloween movie for the kids, ordered pizza, and vegged out on the couch. Around bedtime, we noticed Ian had a weird wiggle in one of his legs as he was going up the stairs. Both of us dismissed it as him being silly, but a bit later, Sean saw that he was really favoring his left leg. It seemed to rapidly get worse, to the point that if he put weight on it, he just crumpled. It took a while before he admitted that he had fallen down and maybe hurt his leg.

Maya this afternoon after school, demonstrating how her pink teeth worked

He was acting so strangely that we loaded up the car and took him to the children’s ER. The nurse and doctors quizzed him about exactly what had happened and where it hurt and how much it was hurting now, and they all seemed bemused by how well 3-year-old Ian speaks and explains things. An x-ray machine was wheeled in to get some images of his leg. There were no fractures, and the kids were both pretty excited that they got to see what Ian’s bones looked like. Ian was a little miffed that the machine didn’t make his leg stop hurting though. Alas he was sent home with most everyone shrugging their shoulders. We were given instructions to rest his leg and provide ibuprofen for the pain. For those playing along at home, that means Ian has now had TWO visits to the ER while Maya has had zero. Who would’ve thought.

Sunday he still wasn’t putting weight on it without some serious wobble. But Monday, he woke up excited to show us how he could straighten his leg out and walk. And sure enough, by today, there was no evidence that anything had happened. Kids are amazing. Sean had taken him to our pediatrician on Monday who suggested that he may have strained a joint.

Trick or treat!

He was good to go for trick or treating today. Rain was in the forecast. The clouds were thickening and the wind was picking up, so after some down time after school, the kids got dressed up in their costumes and we headed out to get some trick or treating in a bit earlier in the evening. We joined up with a few of our neighbors and their kids and managed to visit a handful of houses before fat raindrops were plopping on our heads. I had our raincoats in my backpack, so we all put ’em on and kept right on trick or treating. I can remember as a kid being annoyed when I had to wear a coat over my costume because it was a cold Halloween. Maya and Ian didn’t seem to care so long as the neighbors were giving them candy. We ended our evening by popping into our neighborhood block party for a little while.

Guess who we will be adding to our front yard decorations at Christmas

Ian and Maya both seemed like they had a really great Halloween. And now we get to add Elsa and Anna costumes do our dress-up drawer. Do you want to build a snowman? Because Maya and Ian sure as heck do.

Back on the weekend of October 13th and 14th, we took a trip to Dallas to visit the Texas State Fair. Sean and I have lived in this crazy state for a double-digit number of years, and this is the first time we’ve gone. Having adventures with the kids is a good motivator.

Bigger in Texas, I guess

Our plan had been to drive up on Saturday, play all afternoon and evening at the fair (which is immense), stay the night in a hotel, and then drive back down to Austin Sunday. The fair runs for several weeks, but there was only one weekend that didn’t conflict with some other event in our schedules. We noticed there was rain in the forecast, but we figured we’d make the most of it rain or shine and bought the kids raincoats.

Alas, the weather had other plans. By the time we rolled into Dallas (after a stop off in West, Texas for kolaches), it was flat pouring. We could barely see to drive. Making the most of that day would involve not going to the fair. Luckily, the Perot Museum of Science and Nature was in the same general area as the fair and our hotel, so we just drove there instead.

They were zero interested in having their photo taken

Our kids were maybe a wee bit ornery after the long drive that ended in NOT going to the fair, but the museum was great. Dinosaur skeletons, interactive exhibits, an on-site restaurant, an area of smaller children to run out their energy on the basement floor were welcome features. It kept all of us occupied through the whole afternoon.

The rain had died down by the time we left, so the kids played outside in the water area for a little while and then we headed back to our hotel. Throughout the evening it sprinkled a bit and the sky always looked like it was on the verge of dumping more rain. Still, the thought of getting in the car again was off-putting to say the least. Instead we made use of our raincoats again and walked to the Twisted Trompo restaurant, which 75% of us loved. Maya will still not eat food cooked on fire and the trompos and the flames were right where we could ogle them as we ordered our tacos.

Maya and Ian, riding parent-less

The next morning, after hotel breakfast, we headed over to the Texas State Fair. The weather on Sunday was much more agreeable, maybe even borderline hot in the afternoon. We rode a some rides, including a few kiddie roller coasters, which was a first for Maya and Ian. They loved them. At the end of our visit, Maya and Ian even rode a motorcycle ride together but without any grown ups.

We watched pig races, petted some bunnies, took photos with Big Tex (who is honestly kind of creepy), ate some fried foods (including fried butter – no joke), and walked ourselves silly all over those giant fairgrounds. We even went home with a state fair cookbook. Of course, it was filled with last year’s recipes, so Sean says we’ll have to go back to get the recipe for the Hoppin’ John Cakes with Jackpot Sauce that he loved so much.

We can’t help ourselves

The kids had a great time. When we quizzed them about what they liked the best, they agreed that the rides were their favorite. They tell us they wish we had just ridden the rides the whole time. Sounds like an amusement park visit may be in our future. Maybe once they’re a little better at waiting in lines.

We had a good time at the fair, especially the kids, but as I write about it now, my heart’s just not in it. This past week, my very young cousin Katie died. She was 32. She’s survived by a husband and 5 year old son, a sister, her parents, our grandmother. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago and after a long, hard journey, it finally took her. I’ve been away from home a long time, and she was 10 years younger than me, so we weren’t close, but the sadness has been overwhelming. My heart aches for her, her parents, her sister, her husband and son. My love, no matter how far removed, no matter how “other,” goes out to all of them.

Initial photos are just of some random hijinks that have been fun but maybe not blog-worthy between first day of kindergarten and now. 

Maya has now made it through her first week of kindergarten. Our routine has gone through a mountain of change in a short time, but I think we’ve managed the transition well. Maya, in particular, is having a really positive experience so far, and I couldn’t be more relieved.

Obligatory first day of school shot.

The first full week in August, she went to “kinder camp” in the mornings at her elementary school. There she got to meet a few of the kindergarten teachers and some of her classmates, check out a couple of the classrooms, and eat snacks and make crafts. It started all of us getting used to an earlier schedule (class starts at 7:45) and let Maya get a feel for what her new school would be like.

Notice the resemblance to the above photo?

The Thursday before school started, Maya had two big events. First, we brought snacks and treats for her to share with her montessori class. She had been sent home with a “s’mores kit” her first day in kinder camp and this spawned two ideas. First, we made homemade marshmallows the next weekend, and second, we made our own s’mores kits to send home with her fellow preschool classmates. For 26 people, she stamped labels with an octopus, wrote her own name, and stuck the labels to baggies. We filled them each with a graham cracker, a little chocolate bar, and a couple homemade marshmallows.

S’mores kits for her preschool class

For snack time, we made mini-muffins and brought them to school along with a store-bought fruit plate. Maya had a lot of fun serving the muffins to her class during snack time. Ian was even able to join us as well.

Then after school, we went to the elementary school for an ice cream social and to meet Maya’s actual kindergarten teacher. The whole school has sort of an “under the sea” theme, but Ms. Krauss’s room in particular is so much fun for Maya. There’s an actual fish tank that features, among other things, Dory and Nemo fish. There’s a big stuffed octopus puppet. In fact, there’s a little puppet theater set up. Maya has pronounced it the coolest classroom ever. And Ms. Krauss has “pretty white hair,” which is a big plus in Maya’s book.

Ms. Krauss had sent each kid home with a really sweet “night before kindergarten” poem and some magic confetti to place under their pillows to help them sleep. Maya was so excited about her confetti. “It’s the first magic thing I ever had!” And it worked!

Maya artwork and writing work

On her first day, Maya insisted on wearing her striped octopus dress. We had ordered her a new backpack and lunchbox (though we were shipped the wrong lunchbox and Maya had to wait a week to get the right one) to celebrate her move to elementary school. She was in a happy fizz about her new school and her new backpack. Oddipuddy doesn’t get to go to kindergarten with her, and she dealt well with that also.

She was tired when I picked her up from school that first day, but told me all about the different things she’d learned. She learned that ducks don’t make good pets, how to identify the word “me,” and where the bathroom is. She colored a first day of school book and was able to bring it home. “Today we did something called PE,” she told me in the car on the way to fetch her brother. She really seemed to enjoy her PE class.

Ian artwork

Tuesday was a little harder and she was hesitant to let Sean go when he dropped her off. We managed to get her to bed a half hour earlier on Tuesday night though, and I think that made a difference. On Wednesday morning, she was ready to go, and when I picked her up she was smiling and happy about all the things they’d done in school that day. The rest of the week went without a hitch. We collectively figured out how cafeteria lunches would work (except I haven’t yet cracked the code on what food they offer each day because the posted menu and what Maya reports having eaten are not even remotely the same), where to pick her up from after school care, and where to go when Maya forgets her lunch box, water bottle, etc.

You could see signs of tiredness and stress earlier in the week. At one point Maya said that she had to behave all day long at school; she didn’t wanna have to do it any more once she got home. By the end of the week though, it just seemed to be part of the routine. She was grumpy on Saturday morning because she didn’t have kindergarten to go to.

I was worried that Maya would be really sad to leave her montessori school, but she has clearly moved on. She’s very proud to be a kindergartner, and while she’s happy to visit her old classroom when we pick Ian up in the afternoon, her new elementary school is where she belongs.

Ian loves his sister.

Where’s poor Ian in all this? There’s been a lot of hubbub around getting Maya ready for school and through her first week, and Ian has been dealing with his own set of big emotions. He’s sad that his sister is no longer going to the same school he is. “I just want Maya,” he’ll tell us. When we all went to drop Maya off for her first day, Ian’s eyes welled up and his lips got quivery when it was time for us to leave without her. We have a weird little Ian ritual after we pick him up from school where we say, “Hi Maya and Ian’s school. Bye Maya and Ian’s school.” This past week we dropped Maya’s name from the chant, and he was not impressed. More tears.

I have to admit that last week was stressful for me as well. I worry a lot about how Maya will adapt to things socially. Also, her sometimes lackadaisical (and often willful) nature makes me worry about her getting fed and to the right place at the right time. At least so far, she seems to be managing just fine. We’ll see how the year progresses, but right now she is loving school and rolling with the changes. I think a lot of parents feel a little sad to see their kids moving on and growing up. At least with this, I haven’t felt an iota of sadness. There’s nothing but pride and relief here over the way she’s transitioned from pre-school to kindergarten, and I’m excited to see what the year brings.

Thanks to Lolli and Pop driving to Texas to visit us this summer, our normal grandparent triangle was just an out and back to Missouri. On Friday, July 20th, we packed up the car right after work, fetched the kids directly from school, and drove to Texarkana. We overnighted there (big fun for the kids since they LOVE hotels), and then drove the rest of the way to Missouri the next day.

Big kids in a big bed

Here’s how it was supposed to work. We’d have dinner later than normal and then have the kids do a bathroom break before we left the restaurant. They would drift off to sleep an hour or so into the drive and then just snooze till we arrived around midnight. But Maya and Ian were really excited to see Grammy and Grandpa, and they were really excited about staying in a hotel, and they were really not interested in sleeping at all. They had barely slept by the time we pulled into the hotel parking lot. And then they were so excited to get to sleep in a big bed together that it took a bit for them to fall asleep once we finally got settled into our room.

The next morning Maya woke up at 7:00. And then she woke Ian. And then they both woke Sean, all before our alarm went off at 8:00. The hotel breakfast was solid and we were on the road by about 9:30. The drive was uneventful, and we made it into Friedheim before 5p, leaving plenty of time for the kids to run off their energy before bedtime.

Getting ready to ride in the mule

Grammy and Grandpa’s house is a kids’ paradise. They had water balloons, water guns, and bubble generating devices. They had play dough and kinetic sand and sun catchers for the kids to paint. There are toys tucked away all over the house. And there are two grandparents willing to spend time with them play, play, playing. And as if all that weren’t enough, their cousins Lily and Nathan were there to play with as well.

Feeding fish (and turtles)

In the evenings, we’d ride the mule (it’s like a little tractor … sort of …the internet calls it a utility vehicle, which seems kind of vague, but whatever) out to feed the fish and turtles in the pond. Maya loves it when Grandpa drives crazy in the mule. Ian was brave and rode along this time too and also seemed to really enjoy it.

Time-optimized water balloon filling

Their water balloon system is really neat. You screw a central ring onto the water spigot and it feeds water down to a number of balloons, filling them with water. When they’re heavy enough, the balloons drop down, already sealed and ready to go. Maya would have plowed through the whole package in one night … Grammy and Grandpa managed to dole them out over three nights.

Maya and Nathan

Sunday afternoon, we went to a park to play for a while. Maya rode on the zipline and loved it. Ian tried it out. He slipped off of it, but did a fantastic job of staying upright. Still, he was finished with it after that and needed some comforting before he was ready to go back to playing. Luckily, there was a sandbox with a sort of waterfall in the middle of it. Ian had all kinds of fun making cakes out of the wet sand. He also got Grammy and I to go down the big slide with him over and over again.

Ian and Lily, singing along to the Frozen soundtrack

After that, we drove over to Grayson’s Bar and Grill, the bar known as “Someplace Else” when I was a kid, and sat out of the deck and ate brats and burgers and chicken fingers and wings and listened to Lily and Ian sing songs from Frozen. The weather was so nice. It wasn’t a hundred degrees! It actually cooled off when the sun went down! Sitting outside was a pleasure instead of something to be endured.

Great Grandma!

Monday was a big day. In the morning, we went and saw Great Grandma Schmidt for a while. “We call her ‘great grandma’ because she’s great!” Maya explained. After visiting for a while and doling out hugs, we had a quick lunch at Pizza Hut and a little bit of play time around the house before gearing up for the next adventure: playing at the creek.

Maya, being Maya, was all in. We had barely gotten to the creek before she was waist-deep in water, collecting random leaves and shells and sticks she found. Ian didn’t want to put on his swim clothes, but we brought them along just in case. Sure enough, Maya wasn’t in the water long before Ian decided to change into his trunks and join her. And then, since Maya and Ian had both been so brave, even Lily made her way into the creek, which we hear is kind of a rare thing. Nathan wasn’t feeling well and actually curled up on a lawn chair and went to sleep, poor guy.

Playing at the creek

They saw some tadpoles. Maya and Lily made an Olaf-esque man out of wet sand and then despaired at his “melting.” Ian made a whole big bucketful of “chocolate” using only water and sand. Maya and Ian each collected up a handful of rocks and shells that they referred to as their “creek treasures.” I think playing in and around the creek was probably the highlight of their trip.

I wound up working part of the day on Monday and part of the day on Tuesday, so I didn’t see a whole lot of the goings on. There’s so much to do, I am sure the kids kept busy. Throughout the day on Tuesday, we worked toward gathering up our things and getting the car packed for the return trip. That afternoon, we saw my childhood friend Becky and her daughter Iris. Becky sent us on our way with fresh cucumbers from her garden and some homemade relish that Maya has decided she loves.

During this entire trip, Maya had been playing with a doll that she named Butterfly after the butterfly on its shirt. As we were packing, I heard her saying bye to Butterfly and letting her know that she’d see her again around Christmas time.

The last mule ride

After dinner with Grammy and Grandpa, we finished loading up the car and headed on our way back to Texas. On Tuesday night, our stopover way in Little Rock. This time, Sean’s and my plan worked flawlessly (a rarity for us). By around 8 o’clock, both kids were conked out and they didn’t really wake up till we got to the hotel around midnight. They walked themselves up to the room without complaint and then promptly crawled into bed and went back to sleep.

For reasons I will never understand, I woke up hard at 6:30 the next morning. I read for a while as Sean snored and the kids continued sleeping. After a while, I hear Maya’s quiet morning voice say to Ian, “It’s ok Ian. That noise is just Dad.”

After another respectable hotel breakfast, we loaded up and headed toward Texas. It was an uneventful drive home, and we arrived a little after 6 that evening. Everyone was tired, but we got the car unloaded and saw all the cats and everyone seemed to be doing ok. Nox has evidently learned how to close doors and had shut herself in Ian’s room. She must not have been there for long though because she left no messes and her chief concern on being freed was to make sure we all smelled ok.

I think breaking up the drive was probably better for all of us. Our days of powering through a 12-13 hour drive may be over till the kids are a bit older. One interesting thing about this car trip was how relatively little the kids relied on their ipads. So far, we’ve been making our way through long car trips with a mixture of snacks, activities, and unfettered ipad time. This time though, they really weren’t as interested in their ipads. At one point, Maya even told us she just wanted to look out the window. The drive is long, for sure, but I bet if we asked the kids if they wanted to make the long drive again to go see Grammy and Grandpa, we’d get an unqualified YES.

Our fourth of July celebrating went pretty smoothly this year. Last year, we messed up and missed the big fireworks show at the quarry, but not this time. We were johnny on the spot, securing the date in our memories and on our calendar, packing along things to do, etc. The kids loved it. The fireworks were “amazing” and “so beautiful.” True to form, about five minutes into the show we had waited more than an hour for, Ian asked, “is it time to go home now?”

Waiting for the fireworks at the quarry lake near our house

It’s true that Maya and Ian enjoyed the big fireworks show, and it’s also true that they had a fun fourth of July parade at their school, but the big event, the thing they had been waiting all week for happened on Wednesday the 4th: Lolli and Pop came into town. I thought the kids were going to maul them when they arrived that afternoon. Allllll morning they had been asking when they’d get here.

Zero scared of the sparklers.

Afternoon thunderstorms thwarted the plans we had made to hang out with our friends and deploy fireworks with their kids. Instead we hung out on our front porch and threw poppers and played with sparklers. Maya again was nervous about the sparklers and basically had to be helped with them till the very end.

That evening, Sean and Pop went and picked up pizza from Via 313 for dinner. I still haven’t actually been to the restaurant, but I have benefited from Sean’s lunchtime leftovers many times. This is Detroit-style pizza, and it is delicious.

Hanging out with Lolli and Pop

The next day, I didn’t see a whole lot of what went on because I wound up working. From the sound of things, there was a lot of hide-and-seek with Pop and a lot of playing a farming game on the computer with Lolli. They all went out and had Nashville hot chicken at T22 for lunch. I was gifted with lemon meringue pie for dessert.

Pop and Maya playing Nintendo

Sean and Pop went and bought groceries so I could cook dinner that night. Throughout the week, the kids had been running through various desserts they could make for Lolli and Pop. There was discussion of brownie cookies, bundt cake, and who knows what else. They eventually settled on baking them a heart-shaped chocolate cake, to which they applied pink icing and so many sprinkles.

For dinner, I grilled flap steak, which is served with a green onion (also grilled) walnut sauce. It’s a very solid recipe. Last year, Maya decided she wasn’t going to eat anything that “had fire on it,” and her tune has not changed since. She hates the smell of fire; birthday candles, fireworks, and barbecue joints all cause her to complain. She will not eat grilled food. Unbeknownst to me, earlier in the summer, Sean experimented by burying a single piece of grilled chicken amongst Maya’s non-grilled chicken as a test. Sure enough, she leaned into it, gave it a sniff, wrinkled her nose and announced that it smelled like fire and she wasn’t going to eat it.

While most of us were enjoying freshly grilled flap steak, Maya had T22 leftovers instead. We’ll keep working on her. Maybe she’ll eventually come around.

Cavern

On Friday, we had our big outing. We drove out to Natural Bridge Caverns. We weren’t sure how the weather was going to be (hot and sunny, as it turns out), and we could tour the caverns rain or shine, so we went for it. The kids loved it. The length of the tour was about 75 minutes, and I don’t remember ever getting the impression the kids were losing interest. They actually followed directions and kept their hands to themselves while in the cavern. Maya hiked the entire thing by herself, and Ian made it nearly to the end.

They brag about their 70 degree temp in the cave, but with nearly 100% humidity, we still felt a little gunky by the end. And then we walked out into the full sun. Nothing some nice lemonade couldn’t help fix though. Maya and Ian squished some pennies and picked up some interesting rocks for souvenirs. We had passed through Gruene on the way to Natural Bridge Caverns, so on the return trip, we swung into the Gristmill restaurant, a centerpiece of the town, and had a very late lunch / very early dinner that filled us up and kept us happy through the rest of the day.

Well, some of us are looking at the camera

Pop and Sean took Maya to her swim lesson in the morning on Saturday. Probably because Pop was along, Maya was on her best behavior and the lesson went really well! After playing at the house for a while, we took the kids to a friend’s birthday party in the afternoon. More playing with the grandparents while I grilled again – this time jerk chicken and mushrooms.

On Sunday, after some more hide-and-seek and lots of goodbyes, Lolli and Pop started their return trip to Alabama. The kids kind of moped their way through the afternoon, telling us they missed Lolli and Pop, and they’re already looking forward to visiting at Christmas time. I suspect the feeling is mutual.

Maya had been planning Father’s Day ever since we had Mother’s Day. She saved a box for Dad’s gift and decorated it with stickers. At every opportunity, she suggested we go to the craft store for supplies. Ian mostly wanted to know what kind of cake we would be making him.

This crazy bunch!

Before any of that though, we have to talk about Maya’s “graduation” from preschool. Sean and I thought we were dropping by the school to check out the older primary students’ science projects. Maya and her classmate Faustine did an experiment demonstrating buoyancy. They dropped raisins and pasta into soda and as the bubbles collected, sure enough, those items were buoyant. The other kids all had their experiments set up as well, complete with poster boards explaining them and guiding the grown-ups toward the sort of questions they could ask the kids to help them demonstrate their knowledge.

Budding scientist.

To our surprise, after the science fair wrapped up, they booted us all from the room so they could set up for graduation! Each kid who was moving on from preschool or private kindergarten was called up to receive a certificate and a medal and to have photos taken. Amazingly Maya was able to sit through the whole thing. I have to admit, Sean and I were nervous.

Earlier in the spring, the kids had had a fun visit to the Thinkery. One of their favorite things was building art projects out of scraps and trash that had been collected up and saved for that purpose. We now have a corrugated cardboard box into which the kids chuck the things they may want to repurpose later for some sculpture or mixed media masterpiece. They call it “the art box.” It has various containers, straws, lids, labels, etc for them to put together however their imagination directs them.

Art car!

Maybe a week or two before Father’s Day, Sean spent time with them making “art cars.” They built axles with straws and skewers, wheels out of old lids, and decorated them with bottle caps and craft supplies. They were brilliant, and the kids had so much fun putting them together. The comment at the end of the day (probably by me) was something like, “See, Dad can do art projects too!”

Taking Dad to fancy dinner

The day before Father’s Day, we took Sean to “fancy dinner” at the Second Bar + Kitchen restaurant at the Domain. Maya was all into it, wanting to dress up and have barrettes in her hair and the whole bit. Ian had received a new rainbow shirt from Lolli and Pop, and even though he’d worn it the day before, he insisted that it needed to be washed so he could wear it again to our fancy dinner. We did manage to talk him into pants, which honestly surprised me, but we couldn’t convince him to wear anything but his flip-flops, and it just wasn’t worth the fight to get real shoes on his feet. Plus we live in Austin. Flip-flops aren’t out of the norm.

Maya and Ian did ok. They were pretty antsy, like always, but at least Maya seemed to understand when I tried to explain that it was a special dinner for Dad and it would make him really happy if he could just relax and enjoy it. Sean and I enjoyed our food. Maya enjoyed her swanky mocktail. And the kids surprised us by leveling a spicy meatball appetizer.

They had tiramisu brownies for their dessert. As we ordered them, Ian started to look well and truly concerned, to the point of tears. We tried asking him what was wrong and he loudly insisted, he didn’t want any soup on his brownies!!! Dude, it’s tiramisu, not tirami-soup.

We eat really early so we annoy as few diners as possible.

The restaurant is within the Archer Hotel, and the space it occupies is big and bright and open. That big open space makes for a very natural extension of the hotel space, and from our table, we could see a big stone staircase kind of half-spiraling upward around a giant chandelier. What the kids wanted to do most of all through the better part of dinner was walk up the big staircase.

While Sean finished his dessert and settled the check, the kids and I meandered up the staircase. Ian is completely obsessed with stairs. Probably since he could walk, even if you were carrying him, he’d want to be put down so he could walk the stairs on his own. Today was no different, except that he and Maya wanted to count them. Maya’s pretty solid on counting to 100 at this point, but Ian’s approach is more … creative. One through twelve are pretty good, but thirteen and fourteen often get munged into one and there is no seventeen, only eleventeen. He’s pretty consistent with it, “fiwteen, fifteen, sixteen, eleventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty!” It drives Maya nuts, and she constantly tries to teach him the right way. Needless to say, she had to hurry ahead of us so he didn’t ruin her count.

Can’t take us anywhere

When we got to the top, we discovered we could look out over the restaurant and the kids had fun spotting Dad and trying to get his attention. He joined us in the sitting area at the top of the stairs for a few minutes, and Maya and Ian horsed around on the furniture. Dresses be damned, Maya was jumping off of stuff.

The next morning, on actual Father’s Day, we had a fun event to attend. Before that though, Maya and Ian wanted to give Dad his gifts. They had each gotten him a T-shirt and made him both beaded key chains and beaded necklaces. I tried to talk them into just the key chains, but they insisted that Dad needed pretty necklaces just like I had gotten. (Subtitle: the kids really like stringing beads.)

Kapow!

The Alamo Drafthouse, our favorite movie theater, often throws family parties for new release kid movies. We had taken Maya to see Finding Dory as part of a family party a couple summers ago. This day, we were seeing Incredibles 2. Beforehand, they had tables set up where you could decorate a superhero mask, construct your own superhero emblem, and create flip books and color Incredibles coloring sheets. The big draw was outside though. The fine folks at the Drafthouse had set up an entire obstacle course. They had two separate courses set up, so people could compete for time. Maya and Ian (with Dad’s help) competed. It turns out the Ian actually won. Maya cares a lot more about having fun than winning, so she took her time playing with some of the things along the way.

Dad and Ian at the movies!

Maya has gotten to the point where she can generally sit through a movie, but I was figuring Ian would get bored, and I’d wind up taking him to the bathroom half a dozen times. During the pre-show, kids got to go down to the front of the theater and exercise their superhero powers. Some of them froze the audience, some made them all simultaneously yawn. Maya’s superpower was to make everyone act like octopuses, tentacles a-wagging.

Octopus Maya

During the movie, Ian nestled into my lap and nibbled at his lunch. Maya giggled and shrieked through the whole thing. She especially loved Jack Jack. Had it been a whole movie full of Jack Jack, that would have been fine with her. The one thing Ian talks most about is the giant vacuum cleaner that sucked up Mr Incredible. The kids traded parents partway through, and Ian fell asleep in Sean’s lap. But, we all got to watch the movie, all the way through. We didn’t have to take a single bathroom break. I’d never have guessed it.

That afternoon, we made Dad a chocolate cake. When you have kids, of course, the cake is never really *your* cake. One third of it had no icing because Maya doesn’t like icing. Another third had purple icing and christmas-tree shaped sprinkles because those were Ian’s choices, and the last lone third was done up with orange icing, because that’s Dad’s favorite color, and even more sprinkles, because Maya loves sprinkles and they wouldn’t stick to her non-iced portion of the cake. They did help me get the cake baked, iced, and decorated, and they seemed to truly enjoy presenting it to Sean.

Sean isn’t known to be terrifically expressive, but I believe he enjoyed his weekend. The kids were pretty well-behaved, for them. The dinner was delicious, the movie was fun, the cake was moist and obviously well-decorated. And the kids got to think a little about taking care of their Dad for a change.