Labor Day and later, September, 2007
| A perfect Labor Day. Thank you, thank you, thank you Robert's godparents for loaning us the canoe and play boat. While we have a lot of kayaks in our basement, we don't have a canoe and that seemed like the right boat to take Robert out on the water. While we were borrowing boats, Sarah borrowed a play kayak (the current style: really short). She had fun, as you can see by the ender in the photo at left, and Robert and I had fun in the canoe. Well, we did until we let Robert "swim" (in his life jacket) a bit. After that he wouldn't get further from the water than the bow of his mom's boat. | |||||||
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| The following Saturday, we headed up to visit a friend from AARP. Robert inherited his red car from Ben (and Julia) -- and he still loves taking it out for a spin. Here he is with Ben showing him the finer points of computer gaming. Robert really does revel in friendships with big kids. |
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On September 11th, we headed into to day care as usual. We did not stop for the memorial service on our way in. Tuesday's are Power Tots days, and Robert really wanted his dad to see the class. So I took advantage of my current situation and stayed lurking in the hallway for a bit before I was able to observe how Ms. Collen gets the kids moving and practicing their gymnastics. She starts out with role call; and even at 3 years old, some of these kids are jokers: When asked if he was here, one of the boys said, "No, I'm at home sleeping." After role call, there are stretches and then the tumbling. | |||||||
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Robert is getting ready for his back flip off of the mat at right. Below, he's recovering from his back flip up on to the mat. They all got to flip on, then off the mat. That was following by a cartwheel (helped by a mat with foot and hand placement hints). Finally, since they were well behaved and listened (for the most part), they were able to "make a sandwich:" Half the class lays down on the mat, the other half calls out what they would like on their "sandwich" (which Ms. Collen pretends to sprinkle on). Then, when she tries to put the bread (the other mat) on top of them, they keep kicking it off. Everyone seemed to enjoy the whole process and were very well behaved (no, I'm not biased... really). |
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| On the 15th, we headed down to Seven Devils for a quick visit. We only had a long weekend, but we made the best of it. In May, Robert gave his grandfather a Thomas the Train set for his 80th birthday. On this trip he and his grandfather had time to play with it. Of course, that was the first order of business Sunday morning. | |||||||
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| After breakfast, Robert had fun helping his grandmother weed the rock garden (where the fairy house is). |
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For dinner, we all headed over to Steve, Helen and Aaron's house where the tradition of tower building continued. A new (new to us, Aaron has been at it for a while) tradition started on this trip is "buckeye bowling." It was so much fun, I didn't stop to take a picture, so you'll have to imagine: You start with buckeye nuts which are about the size of an undersized baseball. These were collected (by my dad) over the course of several walks around Seven Devils and stored in the freezer to ensure they would not sprout. You take the buckeye's to a straight-ish, steep part of the road (straight-ish is hard to find in Seven Devils; steep is easy) and see who can roll them the furthest. A good bowl is down Thorncliff Drive, across Skyland Drive and into the (currently abandoned) golf course. Of course, you can bowl other venues: we had lots of fun on Steve, Helen and Aaron's driveway with nuts painted with fluorescent paint to make them stand out more for night bowling. | |||||||
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