Two Heads

This morning, Karston was busy building robots from Legos. He explained to me that he built a spare head for his robot because "two heads are better than one. That's what they say, you know." I thought his use of that aphorism was hilarious!

Hungry

Bedtime was delayed quite a bit last night because Cale said he was hungry, and he proceeded to eat. And eat. And eat. We let him eat even though he said that when it was time to get ready for bed.

So I was a bit surprised when Cale woke me up at 4 AM saying, "Mommy, I'm hungry." I groggily gave him some juice and convinced him to go back to sleep for just a little while longer.

What's in Your Future?

This is Karston's contribution to his school's newsletter:

When I grow up, I want to be a Human Resources Manager. They teach and hire new people. It is important because everyone has to work at some place.

As long as he has LEGOs in his office too, he might enjoy that!

Sixth Tooth

I think Karston was winding up for another round of tooth anxiety (what if I drop my tooth? what if I swallow my tooth?), but he bumped his face and the sixth tooth promptly fell out!

Email

Karston has been begging me for email on his computer for almost a week, so it was time to do my research on kid email with parental controls. My short list included KIDO'Z and ZooBuh, but I settled on KOL for the sheer simplicity.

Now Karston wants to know why the emails aren't pouring in, and I didn't want to mention that his email is heavily filtered (to receive from whitelist only).

But now I know that 6-year-olds need email, and now I can describe what I do at work ("I make the networks that send email").

Crudities

Yesterday we celebrated my paternal grandfather's 94th birthday at my uncle Shannon's house! The party was wonderful, with good company and delightful stories about my grandad! Cale kept asking silly questions, like Mommy, may I eat this broccoli? Mommy, may I eat this carrot? I was, in fact, starting to suspect that Cale's favorite part of the party was having the platter of crudities within his easy reach. (Karston ate some crackers, and thought about the noodles.)

Tonight when we asked Cale what he wanted for dinner, he said, I want to go back to the house with broccoli and carrots. I couldn't convince him that our broccoli and carrots were good enough to eat, or that my uncle might be a bit surprised to see us the following night (since he knows restaurants are generally open when we want to eat).

Fifth Tooth

With so much less anxiety than the previous tooth, Karston's fifth tooth fell out today, somewhat uneventfully.

Bouncing Tooth

After interminable weeks of anxiety from Karston (what if my tooth comes out when ___?), his fourth tooth finally fell out. I was ready to cheer when it finally came out! His tooth just fell out of his mouth while we were walking away from his elementary school's winter carnival, and it bounced several times down the sidewalk. Espen, one of Karston's classmates, saw it falling and was watching it bounce. Espen and Karston found the bouncing, runaway tooth very quickly, despite a crowd.

Third Tooth

Karston's third tooth came out! He forgot he had a loose tooth because he was so excited about Christmas preparations, so when he bit into his cheese-and-cracker, his tooth stuck in the cheese! Yes, a tooth stuck in cheese that barely has tooth marks all around is looks as comical as it sounds!

We are hoping that The Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus don't collide on their ways to our house tonight.

The Cocoa Shoppe

Karston's first grade class held a holiday Cocoa Shoppe, and read letters to parents. Karston's letter ...

Dear Mom and Dad,
I love it when you play chess with me. Mom, my favorite thing about you is you are sweet. Dad, my favorite thing about you is you are strong. It is so much fun when we go on Opa's motor boat because it is so fast.
I love you,
Karston

Meatloaf

I made meatloaf (with lots of veggies made mostly invisible through the food processor) for dinner for the adults. Since Cale is often willing to try what we're eating, I put a slice of meatloaf on his plate. Cale asked, What's that? I said, It's meatloaf. Cale put up his hands to block me from handing him a plate of meatloaf. Since I didn't want to give up easily, I said, Daddy and Mommy want to eat meatloaf for dinner. Cale switched to "gimmee" hands, and started eating meatloaf. Yes folks, the magic phrase for Cale appears to be telling him that's what the adults are eating! If only it were that easy to get his older brother to eat!

Zachary

Today we got our bike rentals delivered (eventually - they had to build one for me) and pedaled over to Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park just in time for lunch. The boys played on the beach, then we ate lunch, then we explored the historic fort. Each time I read out the full name of the park, Karston said "Zachary?!" because one of his friends since preschool is Zach.

3V's

We left the house early this morning to catch a flight to Fort Lauderdale. After an interminable line at the car rental counter, we hopped in a minivan to drive to Key West. Although we were hungry, we also wanted to get away from the airport before eating.

At the first exit, the best choice was Burger King, so we went on. The second exit had a Subway, so we followed the signs there. However, as we were walking up to the Subway, I saw the adjacent restaurant, 3V's Organic Cafe, had a special on a cuban mix sandwich. I couldn't resist! The restauranteur pulled out all of the stops (who cares what's listed on the menu?) to try to coax Karston to eat a reasonable amount of food, but he learned what we already know: Karston is pickier about food than you think. To his credit, he's sincerely interested in serving tasty food that's as healthy as possible.

Along the way, we stopped at Bahia Honda State Park so the kids could play in the sand.

We made sure to have an early dinner so we could watch the Key West Holiday Parade starting at 7 pm. The parade went on until 9 pm! Key West may be small, but you wouldn't know that from the number of floats. many of the floats tossed candy to the kids. Since this is the second time we've watched this parade, we knew to bring a bag for all of the candy! Karston wants to bring the candy to school for his class' gingerbread house decoration. When we left the parade, Karston said, "I'm tired of getting candy now."

C-a-l-e

This afternoon, Cale said, My name is spelled C-a-l-e, picked up a marker, and wrote his name on the whiteboard. He's three!

Games

Karston has been playing Angry Birds at Mimi's house after school, and Dig Dug at home after school. Three nights ago, before falling asleep, Karston explained his Dig Dug strategies to Daddy so he's getting more sophisticated quickly. He was very proud yesterday that he finally made it to level 5 in Dig Dug! About a week ago, he picked up checkers quickly. And this evening, he started to learn chess.

I think game play has clicked for him. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I need to find games for this kid to play ...

Matching

This morning when I dropped Karston off in his first-grade classroom, the girl who sits next to him stared at my shoes. Finally Keely said, I think your shoelaces don't match. For a few weeks, my shoelaces have been one polka-dotted and one striped, so my shoelaces definitely don't match. So I asked, Are you sure? and she stared at my shoes again before answering I think so. The subtleties of "I think so" must not be apparent to first-graders! So I told her, my shoelaces definitely do not match, but we agreed the bright colors were pretty.

NC State Fair

As if the circus weren't exciting enough, today we went to the state fair! The weather later this week looks to be cooler, cloudy, and possibly rainy, so we went today. We took Karston out of school a little early, had a quick lunch, and drove to Raleigh.

When we first started walking around, the weather was really quite warm! OK, I got hot. We hit our usual attractions, like the antique farm equipment and the Village of Yesteryear. We let Karston ogle the Lego displays. Daddy, Mommy, and Cale ate pickles from the Mount Olive booth before we went over to the kiddie rides. Cale just loved the roller coaster, while Karston really liked spinning around. While we were at the kiddie rides, we saw Lucy, Lexi, and Drew!

After that structured entertainment, at Karston's request, we wandered over to the waterfall by Dorton Arena and the kids played in the spray (I stayed dry instead).

The only drawback was that our usual state fair dinner (Murphy House barbecue) closed at 5:00 PM, and we didn't get there until nearly 6. Karston and Cale were fascinated with the remote-controlled school bus Buster who talked to them. We kept getting a few raindrops, and I kept thinking we would leave soon, but the rain held off. We all shared a funnel cake (yum!), and the boys had soft-serve ice cream. I got an apple cider freezie, but the boys liked it so I had less than half. We'll have to make some at home! Since the rain held off, we walked around the gardens and the boys played miniature golf until the mosquitoes were about to carry me off.

As we walked back to the car, the weather was still a warm 75 degrees with a gentle breeze. (It felt really good to sit down in the car, though!) Just as we all climbed in, the skies opened up and it started to rain. Perfect timing, for a perfect day at the state fair!

The Star Family Circus

Today Daddy took Karston, Cale, Opa, and Grammy to a small, family-run circus in Burlington. As a bonus, Karston's friends from school Drew and Lexi with their mom Lucy came along! At first, our hopes were low because we couldn't get additional information when we called the Armory where the circus was held. However, we went with free kid admission coupons from Bandido's Mexican restaurant just to see.

Luckily, the show was phenomenal!

The lead, father or grandfather of the group, juggled, flipped, and spun huge cylinders, 4x4 feet sheets of painted plywood, and then full-grown people all with his feet! Yes, upside down, using just his feet, and never missing once. The ladies did twirly rope acts suspended only by their hair, and other bizarre acts interspersed with cute animal tricks. Cale barely made a sound, except occasional enthusiastic clapping, through the performances because he was captivated. Karston kept turning around to make sure we saw what just happened with huge eyes ready to pop out. Karston was very excited, and the show was very exciting.

At the end of the show, there was one more act outside because it did not fit inside: the “Cage of Death” - a forty-foot-tall spinning contraption with a 10’ diameter ring on it. The performer ran inside of this open air ring to make the entire cage rotate. Then he juggled while riding it. Then he jumped rope while free falling as it rotated. This show was almost too scary to watch! Then he climbed outside of the open ring and walked on top of it as it continued to go into forty-foot circles. Creepy! Then he jumped rope, on the outside of it as it was rotating. Please, please get down, this is too much. We like you, we had our money’s worth; we don’t want you dropping 40’ to the ground. He didn’t listen. He then got a black bag and put it over his head and did it some more, blindfolded…

If you happen to see flyers for the “Star Family Circus” pick one up and go to the show – amazing!

NC Seafood Festival

Boy, October shows up and the weather changes for the chilly!!

We went to the NC Seafood Festival today, wandered through the crafts, met up with Opa and Grammy, sampled the fresh seafood, but especially played at SasSea's Island Playground for the kids. Karston and Cale were particularly interested in decorating SasSea cookies [from the Alex and Brett's bakery] again, so apparently that made an impression last year.

Our timeshare added a miniature golf course since last year, and Karston has played mini golf every afternoon while Cale naps for the past four days. Karston is so involved in his miniature golfing, he always comes back sweaty, excited, and exhausted. Future golfer?

Tomorrow we go home after a week of fun! (After one more stop at King's Barbecue!)

Best Day Ever

Yesterday, the kids watched the sunrise over the ocean, played on the beach, played miniature golf or napped, went to the pool, and played on the beach again. Today, we went to the NC Aquarium, took naps, and played on the beach. The two days don't sound too different, but Karston announced that today was the best day ever after feeding an entire box of (expired) crackers to seagulls while on the beach. Apparently having seagulls within three feet is a grand experience!