Biker Chick

Tuesday night I came home to find Dadam and Cecilia playing in the front yard, both of them looking mischievous as I greeted them. We were going to grab some dinner and it was getting late, so I wanted to get everyone hustled into the van. But where was Ruby?

And then she came racing toward me, riding her bike like a maniac. WITH NO TRAINING WHEELS!

Dadam has been wanting to take them off for a few weeks now, but I was convinced it was too soon and that she would need the summer to work on her balance. It had nothing to do with not wanting her to grow up. Honest. I swear. But he waited until I was gone and they took off those training wheels in a covert operation.

Nevertheless, she's taken to it like a duck to water, and yesterday the girls and I even biked to Target and back to pick up some groceries. It will be fun to do some biking together as a family this summer, but I'm also a little heartsick about how fast this whole "childhood" business is going.

Field Trip

Recently Ruby's class took a field trip to the Children's Museum and I was fortunate enough to go along as a chaperone. Not only was she thrilled to be going to the museum, she was also pretty excited to be riding the bus, too (something she doesn't get to do as we walk to and from school). Chaperoning a group of preschoolers is not for the weak - I was totally exhausted when the trip ended - but overall we had a great time. I snapped some picture of the day - here with dinosaur.

She face-painted herself:

Checking out the downtown streets:

With friends:

Ruby is my dazzler, and I can't believe she's nearly done with preschool.

Sigh.

Cousin!

Cecilia and Ruby are now cousins! Baby Isabella was born yesterday in Virginia and the girls - especially Ruby - are very excited to meet her. Their very first first cousin!

Welcome to the world, Isabella. And don't listen to anything Ruby says, she's nothing but trouble.

Snacks.

Ruby was just eating pita bread and hummus. Mostly because I knew I was going to get a funny answer, I asked Ruby to remind me what she was eating. First she attempted the pita:

Tortilla?

Maaaaaaango? (Laughter, mostly hers.)

I helped her out and reminded her it was called a pita. Then the hummus:

Ham-a-taste? (I've spelled this phoentically, of course.)

Mayo?

When I told her that we don't actually dip bread in mayo in this house, she then guessed "orange juice," laughed hysterically, and ran away.

Who said TV isn't educational?

[Dadam and the girlies are watching Doctor Who together.]

The Doctor: This spaceship is a police state!

Cici: What’s a police state?

Dadam: Well, it’s a government where the police don’t have to explain what they do. If they want to throw you in jail, they just throw you in jail; you don’t have to break any laws for them to do it.

In our country, the police are good because we have laws that they have to follow – they can’t just do anything they want. Some countries aren’t so lucky, unfortunately.

Ruby: Who makes our laws?

Dadam: Well, the people we vote for every year, they make the laws and policies that everyone has to follow. That’s called democracy.

Cici: Is Canada a police state?

Earn a Sticker!

Some of you know that I like to compete in sprint distance triathlons (which is nothing compared to Dadam's marathon), and as such I need to be pretty diligent about training. I follow a training plan that has me running, swimming, or biking 6-days a week (sometimes multiple things in one day), and this isn't always something I look forward to. As a motivator, I put a shiny star sticker next to every workout that I complete so that at the end of the week I can see how awesome I was at training. (Seriously, it helps.)

The other day Ruby saw me doing this and wanted to know what it was all about. I explained my system and then she asked if she could add the sticker. After she had done so, I asked if she could tell what I had done that day by reading the word. She sounded out all the letters -R-U-N - and was trying to put the sounds together. I was helping her along with the sounds but she kept putting the U sound first, making the sound uuuurrr, uuurrr. I was about to correct her when she settled on her final answer:

Uuuurrrrn a sticker!

Good enough for me.

Run in the Sun

Saturday afternoon I needed to get in a run and decided to run outside because the weather here was ridiculously beautiful. As I was stretching in the living room, both girls made it clear that they also wanted to go running, and they wanted to go NOW. After some pouting and then negotiating I agreed to let them run with me, first Cecilia and then Ruby.

Simply put, running with Cecilia was magical. She was a few steps ahead of me most of the way, and I spent most of that time just watching her run. It comes so naturally to her (something I've never been able to say), and she looked like a gazelle with her long, lean muscles. Every so often I would nudge her and ask if she was okay and she'd just smile and nod and then keep on truckin'. Along the way she also pointed to flowers and would comment on how pretty they looked, and at one point we came across someone's hopscotch game and she jumped through it and then immediately resumed her jog. When all was said and done we had gone about 20 minutes at a pretty decent clip.

Sometimes - like during that run - I find it hard to believe she's my daughter. I'm baffled that I'm a part of something so amazing. She is unbelievably earnest, and kind, and innocent, and has such a big heart.

The world is a better place with her in it, and I'm grateful that she wants to run through it with me.

Barbie the Patient

I have to begin this post with a note about Barbie. I'm not a fan of giving Barbies to little girls, if for no other reason than little girls don't need to play with toys that have gigantic breasts. There are plenty of other reasons, to be sure, like her disproportionate measurements that give girls warped ideas about the female body, and the fixation on clothing and being pretty and hair-dos. There are just so many other things in the world that I want my children to be interested in, and Barbie ranks pretty darn low on the list. Having said that...

Ruby has a Barbie. We managed to avoid any and all interest in such things with Cecilia, but Ruby is ... well, Ruby. She changes her clothes multiple times a day, she notices clothes and outfits on others, and she thinks pink is the greatest color on the planet. This year, Santa brought her a new scooter for Christmas, and he might have had a coupon for the Barbie version of the scooter - the kind that comes with a spot for a Barbie doll. I suspect that Santa thought in order for the present to be complete, it should probably have a Barbie in the Barbie spot. And while I won't presume to always understand Santa's motivation, I think it's a fair assessment. Anyway...

One of the cats has done some chewing on Barbie's feet. Ruby discovered this yesterday and was very upset. There were tears and dirty looks shot at both cats, but I managed to calm Rubes down by telling her she should just bandage her up and pretend that Barbie had suffered some injury. Once we had a solution in mind, the whole thing was quickly forgotten and we moved on with our day.

I came home last night from a meeting after the girls were sleeping, but I did find their handiwork and HAD to share it:

Clearly Ruby recruited her older sister for this procedure because the work is just too good. Too bad the cats didn't start by giving Barbie a breast reduction, but this is still super awesome.

Math Terms

We're presently sitting at the dining room table, all doing homework. I'm reading Leadership for the Common Good, Cecilia is doing multiplication problems, and Ruby is drawing pictures of eating utensils. I actually love this time of day because we're together, we're chit-chatting as we work, and things feel calm yet productive. Today also included a jaw-dropping moment for me as Cecilia used the word "algorithm" correctly as she was describing her math methodology. As a reminder, she's 7.

Maybe if I buy her some candy she'll help me with my statistics homework tomorrow.

Home Again Home Again

We've done very little blogging lately because we haven't had much to blog about - the girls just returned from an extended stay with Grandma and Grandpa K in Wisconsin. We spent last weekend there, left the girls on Sunday to come back to MN, and only retrieved them yesterday (Friday). It was a LONG time without our favorite girls.

It worked out well because this week was full of various commitments for me and Dadam, so on one hand the week went by quickly and was pretty uneventful. On the other hand, the house was too quiet, the mornings were too calm, and I didn't laugh nearly as much as I do when my children are here. At times it was downright painful without them.

But now, thankfully, they're home. Our family is complete again and all is right with the world, and now I must sign off so I can go clean up the Cheerios that are spilled all over the coffee table...