After breakfast, we'd take a family self-time photo out front, and I'd prepared everyone's clothes accordinging (a loose theme of red and white). Dave would take the boys to the BMX park, and I'd follow with Katrina to take some video, then I'd take her to the park to play with the White family. After her nap, I'd take her to Sur La Table in Los Gatos to return something, and pick up a few "necessary" (ahem) items. Perfect.
Not so perfect. She has a cold, mostly a runny nose and a lot of coughing, and just couldn't sleep last night. So we stayed up with her (fortunately it wasn't too late yet) and tried to keep her vertical as long as possible to clear things out. I sure wish she would just put her head down on my shoulder! Nothing doing. Finally, after about half an hour, her cough had calmed enough that she could lay back down and sleep. I relate, since when I have a cough, the transition to lying down brings it on.
Then she woke up this morning at 6:15am. It's Sunday, baby! Argh. She was way too much of a mess for the family photo, and needed a nap before the boys left for the BMX park. No photo, and no BMX park. Wah.
Not all was lost; I had a rare hour at home while she napped and it was nice and quiet. Just as I was accepting this state of affairs, she woke up. I tried to feed her (no WAY Mom), hastily installed the extra carseat in Dave's car, and zoomed out to the BMX park to catch the boys.
And I did! Dave had taken them to the bike shop first, so they were in full swing by the time I joined them at the park. Grumpy as Katrina was, she just about jumped out of the stroller seat with excitement watching her brothers, who at the time were the only ones there, with one other kid about Gabriel's age (maybe younger).
What fun. It's hard to believe that just last May, Gabriel was riding the little yellow bike with training wheels. It was only a few months ago that Julian lost the training wheels too, and now here they both are going right up the big hill to the plateau where the riders stop and start. Julian will go over some of the bumps, but not all of them, and Gabriel hasn't yet tackled a center course of bumps, though I don't see why he couldn't.
Julian, poised to start from the plateau, then goes down and takes the first bump.
And then back up to the start-stop plateau.
Later, a bunch of big kids arrived too, and it could be a little unnerving seeing Julian swarmed by all the bigger bikes. He's still just three years old!
Gabriel, meantime, tested his mettle on the 20" bike. It is way too big for him; he had to get off the bike completely every time he stopped, since he couldn't reach the ground well enough to balance the bike with one foot. (Of course, I of all people support riding a two-wheeled vehicle despite other people telling you it's too tall for you!)
It didn't seem to slow him down.
You go boys! I'm so glad this is developing into a regular activity for them. They worked hard, and were good and tired later. And it's a fun thing for Dave to do with them -- he has to ride his bicycle too!
For the record, today there were two girls there, both older than Gabriel, but apparently not as experienced. Both went around the course about the way Julian did, skipping the same big humps, though neither would go up the stop-start plateau. It could just be an experience thing; even the other boy about Gabriel's age wasn't as confident, and cried whenever he fell, to the irritation of his jocky Dad. This is definitely a man's world so far, though Katrina was so animated and excited, it almost seemed that all she needed was a bicycle and helmet to break in.
I took Katrina to Los Gatos afterward to return a $7 cooling rack at Sur La Table....and wound up buying over $200 worth of other things. How does that happen?! Well, a good saucepan with a steamer insert and lid that all fit together was long overdue anyway.
And I couldn't resist this adorable Giant Cupcake Cake Pan, what with birthdays coming up. It did occur to me later that it might be a tad difficult to actually slice this cake, but this is a good problem to have. And despite coming home with every possible shape of spatula, I somehow forgot my dearth of small ladles. Looks like I left myself an excuse to go back!
When we got home, boys were having lunch, Katrina got a little more lunch (her eating has been off today), and then we attempted the family photo again. For once, the boys were very cooperative, but it took some work to get Katrina not to cry. She relaxed and started to laugh right afterward of course, when Julian made up a game of her patting his face.
If there's anything I ought to know by now, having been a mom for almost 6 years now, it's that I never really have anything figured out.
11/25/07
No comments:
Post a Comment