Sweet Victory

Papa and Bam were up for the Memorial Day weekend and it was as usual PACKED with excitement. My memories of the weekend included lots of Bella and Papa time, drawing both very very large and very very small parrots together... lots of falling asleep by 9pm, and a little bit of sleeping in while Papa and Bam dealt with the early rising kiddies.

Saturday and Sunday, Bella had a lot of good neighborhood play time: The "pack of kids" flitted from house to house, and we tried not to worry about where they were exactly, as long as we still heard shrieks of delight wafting up the block. Bella was in a very happy place. Two of the kids on the block have battery powered ride-in cars, and Pamela related a vision straight from Mogadishu of seeing the one kid driving, and another perched on the back holding a star wars blaster, going in circles around the yard. I'm pretty sure that in Somalia there is less giggling however.

Saturday night Randy had a birthday gathering at his house with margaritas, burgers, and good company. It was a beautiful spring evening and we all sat out in the clear night without any bugs to bother us. Isaac joined the kids in play - he's really in the middle of things nowadays. He's comfortable climbing ladders and sliding down slides, so his enjoyment of backyard playsets has really increased, and us parents need to sit there and make sure he doesn't fall and crack his noggin.

Speaking of noggins - Isaac woke up Saturday with a bit of a devil in his car and was pulling on one of the gates when it sprung open and bopped him on the forehead. he got a cut and a big goose-egg up there, which canceled our plans to have his formal portrait taken that weekend. We watched him carefully for any signs of a concussion, but he refused to count to ten or recite the alphabet backwards, so I'm not sure what other signs to look for. He was basically his exact same old self all weekend, so other than the cosmetics, I think he's doing fine.

On Sunday, we had a wonderful dinner at Carrie's in which Isaac ate a whole lot of avocado and somehow managed NOT to get into as much trouble around the not-very-childproofed house as we had expected. Isaac and Freddie (the Boston Terrier) started out on the wrong foot with Freddie knocking Isaac down a few times... but by the end of the visit, the two were great friends and Isaac was bellowing macho boasts of excitement and good cheer (standing legs akimbo, fists clenched, growling "HAAAAAAAAA!" with a big grin. A lot)

Out back, Pamela's victory garden is coming together: We're putting up a little fence to dissuade the varmits from eating our veggies... so we were digging fenceposts all weekend (digging 20 inch holes is a lot of work!). In the end, it's a very cute fence, with a nice little gate in, but the gate has enough space in it to be a rabbit superhighway so I figure we haven't done MUCH to stop the animals, just enough to slow them down, and hopefully make them think twice about what they're about to do.

Monday night we got Maggiano's spaghetti for dinner, which Bella announced to be the "Best Spaghetti EVER". She ate two full plates of the stuff (to our astonishment - she ate almost twice as much as me), and an hour later had two bowls of frosted mini-wheats for "dessert". I'm thinking she'll be adding 3 inches to her little frame in the coming weeks. Isaac also chowed down on the stuff by the handful - the man likes his spicy food!

One final vision from the weekend: Isaac is a dancing machine, we know this. He loves to dance and has some pretty fun moves. On Friday he treated us to a new move which I'll call the "Kickstand" - he puts one leg back and rocks back and forth, while doing hand jive. On Sunday, I caught him standing in front of the oven, looking at himself in the reflection. He slowly put his leg back in Kickstand position, and did some of his dancing in slow motion, watching himself. Yes, I caught him REHEARSING HIS NEW DANCE MOVES.

Tuesday I took off for Portland, but PapaBam stayed past lunch: Joe treated us to a painting on the Garage for the Victory Garden, and he also built a strange little owl for Bella out of a bit of wood left over from the fence posts. It's always wonderful to have bits of papa-art around, and these are things we'll enjoy for years to come.

So, Happy Memorial Day to all.